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Asked: 2026-05-11T03:52:04+00:00

I see the term ‘octet’ popping up in literature about nonces for hashing, and

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I see the term ‘octet’ popping up in literature about nonces for hashing, and it seems to be synonymous with ‘character’, although there is a kind of pattern to how the words are used.

This leads me to believe that there is a formal distinction between the two. If anyone could enlighten me to what it is, I’d appreciate it.

(and please, no lectures about octal character codes or octal (base 8) numbers; I’m talking about the noun ‘octet’, not the adjective)

EDIT: as it turns out, the word I was looking for, is ‘octet’.

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1 Answer

  1. You are probably thinking about the term octet that is often used to be synonymous with a single-byte (non-unicode) character. Octet in this instance means eight bits. A character can be eight or sixteen or even more bits, but an octet is always eight bits.

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