Byte addressing Byte addressing Byte addressing refers to hardware architectures which support accessing individual bytes of data rather than only larger units called words, which would be "word-addressable". Such computers are sometimes called "byte machines" (in contrast to "word machines"). The basic unit of digital storage is called a bit, storing a single 0 or 1. Many common architectures can address more than 8 bits of data at a time. For example, the Intel 386SX processor can handle 16-bit (two-byte) data, since data is transferred over a 16-bit bus. However, data in memory may be of various lengths. A 64-bit architecture machine
Zero-byte file be zero bytes (a common convention terminates text files with a one- or two-byte newline, however). Conversely, zero-byte files must use some disk space to be indexed by a filesystem (though none for content, in most cases). In some cases, zero-byte files may be used to convey information like file metadata (for example, its filename may contain an instruction to a user viewing a directory listing such as documents-have-been-moved-to-partition-D, etc.); or to put in a directory to ensure that it is nonempty, since some tools such as backup and revision control software may ignore the empty directories. There are many