Character (computing) of the “basic execution character set” and (in newer C standards) UTF-8 code units which implies a minimum size of 8 bits. The exact number of bits can be checked via codice_2 macro. By far the most common size is 8 bits, and the POSIX standard "requires" it to be 8 bits. Since Unicode requires at least 21 bits to store a single code point, it is usually impossible to store one inside a single codice_1; instead a variable-length encoding such as UTF-8 must be used. Unfortunately, the fact that a character was historically stored in a single byte led
Byte addressing be achieved in one instruction: store this character code at that byte address. Text programs are easier to write, smaller, and run faster. The advantage of word addressing is that more memory can be addressed in the same number of bits. The IBM 7094 has 15-bit addresses, so could address 32,768 words of 36 bits. The machines were often built with a full complement of addressable memory. Addressing 32,768 bytes of 6 bits would have been much less useful for scientific and engineering users. Or consider the 32-bit Pentium processor. Its 32-bit address bus can address 4 billion different items.