[OT] Why is it called string?

[Jarek Zgoda]

Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl> pisze:

>>> My CS professor would insist that a byte is a collection of bits, and not
>>> necessarily eight.  There are machines which do not have 8-bit addressable
>>> bytes.
> 
>JZ> I remember that "byte" in French is expressed as "octet", even if it has
>JZ> only 7 bits...
> 
> Are you sure. Several international organisations use the word 'octet' in
> their official specifications, to make sure that an 8-bit byte is meant.

I cann't recall the machine I'm referring to (it was product of Bull),
but I am sure that lecturer called 7 bit units as "octets". 

-- 
Jarek Zgoda
Registered Linux User #-1
http://www.zgoda.biz/ JID:jarek at jabberpl.org http://zgoda.jogger.pl/