Unit Symbol
| Prefixes for multiples of bits (b) or bytes (B) |
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The unit symbol for the byte is specified in IEC80000-13, IEEE 1541 and the Metric Interchange Format as the upper-case character B.
In the International System of Units (SI), B is the symbol of the bel, a unit of logarithmic power ratios named after Alexander Graham Bell. The usage of B for byte therefore conflicts with this definition. It is also not consistent with the SI convention that only units named after persons should be capitalized. However, there is little danger of confusion because the bel is a rarely used unit. It is used primarily in its decadic fraction, the decibel (dB), for signal strength and sound pressure level measurements, while a unit for one tenth of a byte, i.e. the decibyte, is never used.
The unit symbol kB is commonly used for kilobyte, but may be confused with the common meaning of kb for kilobit. IEEE 1541 specifies the lower case character b as the symbol for bit; however, the IEC 60027 and Metric-Interchange-Format specify bit (e.g., Mbit for megabit) for the symbol, a sufficient disambiguation from byte.
The lowercase letter o for octet is defined as the symbol for octet in IEC 80000-13 and is commonly used in several non-English languages (e.g., French and Romanian), and is also used with metric prefixes (for example, ko and Mo)
Today the harmonized ISO/IEC 80000-13:2008 – Quantities and units — Part 13: Information science and technology standard cancels and replaces subclauses 3.8 and 3.9 of IEC 60027-2:2005, namely those related to Information theory and Prefixes for binary multiples.
Read more about this topic: Byte
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