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Comment by asveikau

9 hours ago

I think the pdp-10 could have 9 bit bytes, depending on decisions you made in the compiler. I notice it's hard to Google information about this though. People say lots of confusing, conflicting things. When I google pdp-10 byte size it says a c++ compiler chose to represent char as 36 bits.

PDP-10 byte size is not fixed. Bytes can be 0 to 36 bits wide. (Sure, 0 is not very useful; still legal.)

I don't think there is a C++ compiler for the PDP-10. One of the C compiler does have a 36-bit char type.

  • Do you have any links/info on how that 0-bit byte worked? It sounds like just the right thing for a Friday afternoon read ;D