>>13794590While an 8-bit byte holds exactly one 8-bit character, if you are working with a subset of characters they can be encoded into less than 8 bits. For instance, as one example, if you only wanted to store uppercase letters A-Z, you could store up to 9 of them in one byte. This in practice is really rare, and generally one requires more than just A-Z (and even if one doesn't at time of implementation, one will in the future). Space is cheap these days and so we generally don't stoop to this sort of encoding which is frankly nasty in terms of how fiddly it can get to code with. –
Brian C
Sep 12 '19 at 2:39
