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Discussion on: Should a modern programming language assume a byte is 8-bits in size?

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tanjent

I agree "byte=8 bit" not anything absolutely mandated by a standard organization. I probably wasn't clear enough in my previous comment, apologies.

And I also recognize that the small percentage of people who understand the true definition of "byte" also are the folks who are most likely to actually need a 6-bit or 9-bit data type to match their non-commodity hardware.

Seems it comes down to a trade-off... (a) Use "byte" as the name for your flexible address size, which will make the experts happy and maybe confuse the newer developers.... or (b) Use some other term for the flexible address size, which will avoid confusing the newer devs, but will make the experts ask "why didn't you call it a byte."