On 9/28/2021 5:14 AM, Toby Thain via cctalk wrote:
  On 2021-09-27 11:46 p.m., ben via cctalk wrote:
  POSIX requires a byte to be exactly 8 bits I read
somewhere.
 C99 C standard?
 Great for ARM and INTEL, not so great for the 36 bit computers. 
 We've been through this before. No. 
As I understand things, POSIX does require the existence of 8 bit bytes,
(int8_t and uint8_t) and requires them to be exactly 8 bits.  It does
not AFAIK explicitly prohibit the existence of bytes with other sizes,
but who would bother?
The C standards are more liberal, and continue to require char types to
be 8 or more bits.
In principle then, char could still be 9 or more bits, but if int8_t is
required for a *NIX, who would do it?  They'd just be making a
compatibility  mess for themselves.
It's also unclear to me whether one's complement representation would be
allowed.  (Various other representations would probably be prohibited by
other restrictions.)
        Vince