Followup to: <Pine.LNX.3.95.1020318112042.740A-100000@chaos.analogic.com>
By author: "Richard B. Johnson" <root@chaos.analogic.com>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> Is it a standard or is it something in-process? The reason I ask is
> that neither KB nor KiB can possibly be correct.
>
> According to the standards, where capitalization is used:
> (1) For a proper name.
> (2) To differentiate between otherwise identical symbols.
>
This is obviously untrue for prefixes. Consider the prefix T (10^12),
which has no lower-case equivalent.
The unit here is B, which does conflict with the unit bel, but is
widely used to mean byte in computer contexts.
I don't like the pronunciations used in the new standard, but I think
using Ki, Mi, Gi, ... at least in writing is a good thing, to
disambiguate between binary and decimal powers. I just read them as
"binary kilobytes" etc if I need to be clear.
-hpa
-- <hpa@transmeta.com> at work, <hpa@zytor.com> in private! "Unix gives you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." http://www.zytor.com/~hpa/puzzle.txt <amsp@zytor.com> - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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