Messages in this thread |  | | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | Re: Changing KB, MB, and GB to KiB, MiB, and GiB in Configure.help | Date | 18 Mar 2002 10:24:38 -0800 |
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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.
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