I always saw byte as something that was relevant for systems that could address objects smaller than words... “byte addressed” machines. The term was mnemonic for something bigger than a bit and smaller than a word. It was usually 8 bits =but there were 36-bit machines that were byte addressable 9 bits at a time. The DECsystem 10 guys also referred to the other subdivisions of their 36 bit words as bytes, sometimes, they could be 6, 7, 8, or 9 bits long. I think they had special instructions for operating on them, but they weren’t directly addressable.
There was also a “nibble”, smaller than a “byte”, which was always 4 bits (one hex digit). I don’t think any of the octal people used the word for their three bit digits. _______________________________________________ sqlite-users mailing list sqlite-users@mailinglists.sqlite.org http://mailinglists.sqlite.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
