Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 1st Oct 2012 22:55 UTC
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Member since:
2007-08-22
A 'char' and 'unsigned char' are typically 8-bits; however, they are by definition the smallest integral unit on the system - whether it is 1, 7, 8, 15, 64, or 128 bits.
A one point 7 bits was very typical hence ASCII is officially a 7-bit character to integer mapping, while ASCIIZ is an 8-bit mapping, and projects like Qt only rely on the 7-bit mapping.
Today, 8-bit is the norm and we haven't gone above that since having an 8-bit integral type is quite useful. However there is nothing keeping anyone from making a 16/32 bit char/byte computer - which would simply mean that UTF-16/32 would be the standard and ASCII wouldn't be very easily supported as you would have to mask-out a good number of the bits to get the data.