Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 30 Oct 1998 08:33:34 -0500
From:      "Evan Champion" <evanc@concer.to>
To:        "Luigi Rizzo" <luigi@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Peter Wemm" <peter@netplex.com.au>
Cc:        <cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG>, <cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/sys/i386/isa wcd.c 
Message-ID:  <003201be0409$e4d602c0$c9252fce@cello.concer.to>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>Yes.. The conventions are a bit grey, but the 'b' usually means bits while
>'B' means bytes.  Likewise, m = milli and M = mega.  So, KB = kilobytes, Kb
>= kilobits, KB/s = Kilobytes per second, MB/s = megabytes per second, Mb/s
>= megabits per second.  I've seen some real mutilations, eg "mbs" which is
>nonsense (which by usual conventions would be millibitseconds).


The correct SI prefix for kilo is 'k', so therefore it should be kb/s for
kilobits per second, and kB/s for kilobytes per second.

Some people argue that a capital K should be used to denote a factor of 2^10
instead of 10^3, but no one ever complains about the equally ambiguous (and
much worse in terms of error) mega ('M') and giga ('G') prefixes.  Because
of this I tend to consider 'k' to be the correct prefix, either in base 2 or
10.

There is no prefix K in SI; the SI unit K is, of course, Kelvin.

Evan



To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?003201be0409$e4d602c0$c9252fce>