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C++ proposal: There are exactly 8 bits in a byte

(www.open-std.org)
182 points Twirrim | 1 comments | 17 Oct 24 22:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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JamesStuff ◴[17 Oct 24 23:09 UTC] No.41874737[source]▶
Not sure about that, seems pretty controversial to me. Are we forgetting about the UNIVACs?
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trebligdivad ◴[17 Oct 24 23:20 UTC] No.41874803[source]▶
Hopefully we are; it's been a long time, but as I remember indexing in strings on them is a disaster.
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1. Animats ◴[17 Oct 24 23:34 UTC] No.41874905[source]▶
They still exist. You can still run OS 2200 on a Clearpath Dorado.[1] Although it's actually Intel Xeon processors doing an emulation.

Yes, indexing strings of 6-bit FIELDATA characters was a huge headache. UNIVAC had the unfortunate problem of having to settle on a character code in the early 1960s, before ASCII was standardized. At the time, a military 6-bit character set looked like the next big thing. It was better than IBM's code, which mapped to punch card holes and the letters weren't all in one block.

[1] https://www.unisys.com/siteassets/collateral/info-sheets/inf...