Re: [Gimp-developer] Size on disk vs size reported on status bar

[Christopher Curtis <ccurtis0 gmail com>]

On Fri, Nov 24, 2017 at 1:06 PM, Kevin Cozens <kevin ve3syb ca> wrote:

> Le 04/10/2017 à 15:51, Elle Stone a écrit :
>
> > So a byte is 8 times a bit? For people like me who can never remember the
> > difference between a byte and a bit, is there a one-sentence explanation
> > for why there are bytes *and* bits?
>
> Perhaps a food analogy might help you remember the difference between byte
> and bit.

I believe this is the proper analogy.

1 binary digit is 1 bit: B_inary dig_IT. Values are 0 and 1.
4 bits is a nybble, and has the values 0 thru 15 (2^4-1). These are coded
as 0-9,A-F in hexadecimal (6+10).
8 bits or 2 nybbles are a byte, with the values 0-255 (2^8-1), coded as 00
thru FF. Also called an octet.*

In C a stray backslash may cause you to accidentally run into octal
numbers, being the 3 bits 0-7 representing base-8, but these are best left
in the dustbin of history.

Chris

* Today, a byte being 8-bits is mostly by convention. In the dark ages of
computing there were also 6-bit bytes (2 octals, being 2 of the 3-bit octal
numbers 0-7, not the 8-bit octets) and other odd combinations that are also
best forgotten.