On Jul 1, 2025, at 10:03 AM, Jason McKesson via Std-Proposals <std-proposals_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jul 1, 2025 at 1:12 AM Thiago Macieira via Std-Proposals
> <std-proposals_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>
>> On Monday, 30 June 2025 06:01:34 Pacific Daylight Time Matthew Taylor via Std-
>> Proposals wrote:
>>> they are permanently on C++98/03 and so there is little point in changing
>>> how we design C++26 or C++29 to account for them.
>>
>> But unless the architectures themselves are end-of-lifed, we can't guess the
>> future. There could be a point when there's a requirement from their users to
>> update, but that can only happen if it is still possible.
>>
>> In any case, how does the standard change in any way by requiring 8-bit bytes?
>
> It's more that standardizing it would change the thinking *around* the language.
>
> At present, C++ could be said to consist of 2 conceptual languages:
> the literal text of the standard, and the language "for all practical
> purposes". There's a fair amount of stuff that one can do with C++ on
> all "normal" implementations which is not guaranteed by the standard.
> One of the reasons for adding things like implicit object creation is
> to bring more of the "for all practical purposes" code into compliance
> with the literal text of the standard.
>
> For all practical purposes, a byte is 8 bits, and people write code
> every day on that assumption. But that's not what the literal text
> says that the language is, so all of that code is hypothetically
> implementation-dependent (but not practically). So standardizing 8-bit
> bytes would be another step towards merging these two conceptual
> languages.

Could we make everyone happy by making the CHAR_BIT==8 guarantee opt in?

Perhaps the syntax for that opt-in could be:

    static_assert(CHAR_BIT == 8);

Oh, look, it’s already catching on: https://github.com/search?q=static_assert%28CHAR_BIT+%3D%3D+8%29&type=code

:-)

Howard