What is a kilobyte/megabyte/gigabyte?

Chris Wood · Post by **Chris Wood** » 07 Jun 2006 05:02

Is XYplorer the same as Explorer in reporting sizes? Is a kilobyte 2^10 bytes, as per the original meaning of the word, or 10^3 bytes, as per the telecomms SI unit also used by hard-drive manufacturers? The answer should be in the help.

Gandolf · Post by **Gandolf** » 07 Jun 2006 07:19

I'm sure Donald uses the correct term, i.e. 1 Kilobyte is 1000 Bytes and 1 Kibibyte is 1024 Bytes, as defined by the SI units. I find the term Kibibyte still unnatural to use, even though it's been official since 1998, and don't see it very often. Perhaps XY should have the option to choose either?

Chris Wood · Post by **Chris Wood** » 07 Jun 2006 08:29

So KB is 1000 bytes, MB is 1000 KB, and GB is 1000 MB?

Post by **admin** » 07 Jun 2006 09:28

Chris Wood wrote:So KB is 1000 bytes, MB is 1000 KB, and GB is 1000 MB?

No. It's 1024 each time.

Here's some original XY source code:

Code: Select all

Public Const KB1 As Long = &H400&     '= (2^10) = 1024
Public Const MB1 As Long = &H100000   '= (2^20) = 1048576
Public Const GB1 As Long = &H40000000 '= (2^30) = 1073741824

I tried (and succeeded, I think) to do it the same way as Explorer. BTW, it's not 100% possible because Explorer is inconsistent in some places

Gandolf · Post by **Gandolf** » 07 Jun 2006 10:32

Chris Wood wrote:So KB is 1000 bytes, MB is 1000 KB, and GB is 1000 MB?

The web site I got the information from is: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

Post by **admin** » 07 Jun 2006 11:05

Gandolf wrote:
Chris Wood wrote:So KB is 1000 bytes, MB is 1000 KB, and GB is 1000 MB?
The web site I got the information from is: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

Yeah, it's technically/etymologically correct. But, as so often in real world, usage differs from the right way. I don't see myself using "mebibyte" in future very often...

Creat · Post by **Creat** » 10 Jun 2006 23:41

Quite honestly, calling a 1000 bytes a kilobyte is just stupid imho, and I really don't care who thinks they're so important that anyone cares about what they declare as a standard (and come up with new words like Kibibyte [which just sounds like a fruit] who I NEVER heard before and am sure sedomly will).
The technical standard (standard being "the one that most people use everyday") is 1024, which is historically correct (afaik it's always been like this). Computers are based on 2s, not 10s!

In advertisement you do see the 1000 notation (of course, the numbers get bigger so you can act like it's more), but it's almost always explained with a * that "1kb = 1000 bytes"... never seen it the other way round.

Sorry if I'm ranting, but these nonsense-standardizations from people with no clue (or, if they actually do know something, people wo forgot to use their brain) just really piss me off...
I'll be quiet now

bye
Creat

Chris Wood · Post by **Chris Wood** » 11 Jun 2006 05:41

Actually 1000s makes more sense for hard-drive sizes, because *humans* are based on 10s, not 2s! Really, do you know how many megabytes in 23 gibibytes? Especially today, when hard-drive space is so cheap. Consumers don't need to think in awkward powers of 2, only developers should need to.

Also, "kilo", "mega", "giga" etc. are SI terms and have always meant "x1000". The original mistake was in using "kilo" to mean 1024 (instead of "kibi".

What's annoying is when you don't know whether people mean 1000s or 1024s. When you buy a 40GB hard-drive and your computer says it's only 37GB, or when you download a file marked as 4MB but your downloader says it's 4.3MB or something...

Post by **j_c_hallgren** » 11 Jun 2006 08:27

As one who has been working with computers since 1974, I find it very irritating when "they" use KB/MB/GB with 1000's instead of 1024!

As far as I learned it, it was ALWAYS a power of 2 when dealing with computers...that's why we had the yellow IBM reference cards to look up the values beyond what we could remember....

I was able back then to get up to 1MB from 2...now that I'm out of programming for 5+ yrs, I've forgotten most of it...

Creat · Post by **Creat** » 11 Jun 2006 23:29

Chris Wood wrote:Also, "kilo", "mega", "giga" etc. are SI terms and have always meant "x1000". The original mistake was in using "kilo" to mean 1024 (instead of "kibi".

What's annoying is when you don't know whether people mean 1000s or 1024s. When you buy a 40GB hard-drive and your computer says it's only 37GB, or when you download a file marked as 4MB but your downloader says it's 4.3MB or something...

But that is EXACTLY the problem. I never said it was a good notation to use the words kilo, giga and so on for the "closest match" from powers of 2 with computers, but that's the way it's been for at least 30 years (don't have a clue when this association with kilo=1024 was first made, but it's been a while

)... No reason to change it now I think...

bye
Creat

Chris Wood · Post by **Chris Wood** » 12 Jun 2006 12:28

Well too bad, usage has already changed, thanks to hard-drive manufacturers - consumers were getting confused with kilo meaning 1000 in data transmission but not in data storage...

Creat · Post by **Creat** » 14 Jun 2006 02:07

Actually it hasn't. In advertising where it produces higher numbers for manufacturers trying to sell stuff yes, but that's it.
I don't know a single person who ever used "kb" as 1000 as opposed to 1024, and I do study Computer Science, so I'm refering to plenty of conversations and plenty of (different) people.
Maybe the "Average Joe" doesn't know that, but he doesn't need to anyway (and to him it usualy also makes no difference).

Now to the actual issue: "Average Joe" doesn't use XYplorer, he just isn't the target audience, if you want

bye
Creat