Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Rod Pemberton" Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Recommendation of a Forth to embed in C Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 05:42:06 -0400 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Lines: 124 Message-ID: References: <85ca46a5-03d8-41ad-ab7e-8e5c3b781e48@googlegroups.com> <88c99e6b-9fb4-45fb-a724-eb03a673ceec@googlegroups.com> <53547407$0$25056$e4fe514c@dreader37.news.xs4all.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: CNsg4fVcCsvs3UaOgZtQCw.user.speranza.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: Quoted-Printable X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Opera Mail/12.16 (Linux) X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.forth:29931 On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 04:27:56 -0400, Mark Wills = = wrote: >> So, yes, totally and completely seriously, ASCII supports extended >> ASCII which are 8-bits, i.e., ASCII is not *only* 7-bits. > > Sure. But your original statement was: > > Bob Bemer and Hugh McGregor Ross created ASCII and EBCDIC. They define= d = > a character of exactly 8-bits. > That's true. > To be fair, you later said: > > I accept that the non-extended ASCII characters only need 7-bits for = > their representation. But, I don't accept that ASCII is only 7-bits > and not 8-bits. > That's true too. > The Wikipedia page for ASCII (not authoratative, I accept) states: > > The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII /=CB=88=C3= =A6ski/ = > ASS-kee)[1] is a character-encoding scheme originally based on the = > English alphabet that encodes 128 specified characters - the numbers = > 0-9, the letters a-z and A-Z, some basic punctuation symbols, some = > control codes that originated with Teletype machines, and a blank spac= e = > - into the 7-bit binary integers.[2] > > ASCII developed from telegraphic codes. Its first commercial use was a= s = > a seven-bit teleprinter code promoted by Bell data services. Work on t= he = > ASCII standard began on October 6, 1960, with the first meeting of the= = > American Standards Association's (ASA) X3.2 subcommittee. The first = > edition of the standard was published during 1963,[3][4] a major = > revision during 1967,[5] and the most recent update during 1986.[6] > > When one checks reference [6] one finds it is entitled: American = > National Standard for Information Systems =E2=80=94 Coded Character Se= ts =E2=80=94 7-Bit = > American National Standard Code for Information Interchange (7-Bit = > ASCII), ANSI X3.4-1986. American National Standards Institute. March 2= 6, = > 1986 > I don't see anything here that changes anything. > From what I can gather reading online, the ASCII character set is a 7 = = > bit code. No. The ASCII specification provides for 8-bit ASCII encodings. These are called extended ASCII characters. ASCII is not exclusively 7-bits. That's the entire point. This was proven in the pdf, an extended version of the ASCII standard, that Alex provide a link too. What you (and apparently Alex too) are saying is that because the ASCII standard allows a 7-bit subset of the character set to be used, then a byte and therefore a character as it was defined by Bob Bemer, Hugh McGregor Ross, and Dr. Werner Buchholz is not exactly eight bits, but seven. That's backwards. > IBM later extended it to 8 bits, known as EBCDIC, but the 8-bit versio= n = > has been (incorrectly) referred to as ASCII. I don't know where you get this. > Unfortunately I don't subscribe to ANSI.org so I wasn't able to downlo= ad = > the actual PDF of the standard tect, and didn't manage to find a copy = = > during my brief search. But it looks like ASCII is a 7-bit system and = = > the 8-bit system we all know so well isn't actually ASCII, but EBCDIC,= = > which is an IBM extension of ASCII. I didn't know that, so I've learne= d = > something, and it's only 9.25am! > EBCDIC is not an extension of ASCII. It has a different character ordering and encodings. Rod Pemberton