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: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 07:54:34 -0400 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Lines: 41 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=iso-8859-1; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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:29957 On Mon, 28 Apr 2014 07:24:39 -0400, Mark Wills wrote: > On Monday, 28 April 2014 10:42:06 UTC+1, Rod Pemberton wrote: >> 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. > > Multiple issues with the above. You claim above that the ASCII standard > allows a 7-bit "subset" (your term) of the character set to be used. It > doesn't. It does. It defines both ASCII and extended ASCII. > The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a 7-bit *set* > (my term). It's not exclusively a 7-bit standard as you've incorrectly noted here: > A separate standard (see my earlier post) specifies a > standardised method to extend the system into an 8-bit set. The extended ASCII characters are defined as part of the ASCII standard. > A byte may be 8 bits, 7 bits, or 11 bits, or anything else. No. A byte is exactly 8-bits. That's how they originally defined it. This should be available in interviews online. > That we commonly think of a byte as 8 bits is more down to a byte being > "de-facto" defined as 8 bits. But I, and as far as I can tell tell, > Alex, have placed no definition of the defintion of a byte in the > context of transmitting ascii characters; nor does the ASCII standard > define one. No one said ASCII defined a byte. Rod Pemberton