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Unpacked: Each decimal digit is encoded into one byte, with four bits representing the number and the remaining bits having no significance. Packed: Two decimal digits are encoded into a single byte, with one digit in the least significant nibble (bits 0 through 3) and the other numeral in the most significant nibble (bits 4 through 7). [nb 8]
For example, a binary string of eight bits (which is also called a byte) can represent any of 256 possible values and can, therefore, represent a wide variety of different items. In computing and telecommunications, binary codes are used for various methods of encoding data, such as character strings , into bit strings.
In computer science, the double dabble algorithm is used to convert binary numbers into binary-coded decimal (BCD) notation. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It is also known as the shift-and-add -3 algorithm , and can be implemented using a small number of gates in computer hardware, but at the expense of high latency .
A byte is a bit string containing the number of bits needed to represent a character. On most modern computers, this is an eight bit string. Because the definition of a byte is related to the number of bits composing a character, some older computers have used a different bit length for their byte. [2]
A bit array (also known as bitmask, [1] bit map, bit set, bit string, or bit vector) is an array data structure that compactly stores bits. It can be used to implement a simple set data structure . A bit array is effective at exploiting bit-level parallelism in hardware to perform operations quickly.
These prefixes are more often used for multiples of bytes, as in kilobyte (1 kB = 8000 bit), megabyte (1 MB = 8 000 000 bit), and gigabyte (1 GB = 8 000 000 000 bit). However, for technical reasons, the capacities of computer memories and some storage units are often multiples of some large power of two, such as 2 28 = 268 435 456 bytes.
The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communication. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. [1] The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented as either " 1" or "0 ", but other representations such as true/false, yes/no, on/off, or +/− are ...
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. 1 byte (B) = 8 bits (bit). Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer [ 1 ] [ 2 ] and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures .