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From: Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: evolution of bytes, The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2025 06:54:32 -0700
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John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
> According to Ted Nolan <tednolan> <tednolan>:
>> In article <vq2j3r$v1q6$2@dont-email.me>,
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>> On Sun, 2 Mar 2025 20:34:09 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:
>>> 
>>>> S/360 brought us the addressable 8 bit byte packaged into 16 bit
>>>> halfwords and 32 bit words, using the same addressing for each.
>>> 
>>> Did any machine offer “byte” addressability with “byte” having
>>> any meaning 
>>> other than “8-bit quantity”?
>> 
>> As late as the last half of the 1980s, we ran some network operations
>> on a BB&N C-70 machine with 10 bit bytes.  
> 
> Good point, I'd forgotten about it.  It was a C-30 with two extra bits in
> each byte to increase the address space from 16 to 20 bits.
> 
> I talked to one of the developers who told me with considerable frustration
> how much C code implicitly assumed 8 bit bytes.  Well, duh.
> 

C is supposed to be agnostic about data sizes, with a few specifications
such as “sizeof(short)<=sizeof(int)”. This was probably a reaction against
PL/I where sizes are specified explicitly, such as “bit(8) unsigned”.  As
usual programmers managed to sabotage this, just like they introduced
character code dependencies .

-- 
Pete