A consecutive sequence of variables of the byte data type, in computer programming, is known as a byte array. An array is one of the most basic data structures, and a byte is the smallest default scalar type in most programming languages. A byte array can be invaluable when reading files stored in an unknown or arbitrary binary format, or when a large amount of data needs to be stored efficiently to save memory. There are also some cases where a byte array can be used to store string data to help keep memory usage low. Using a byte array can lead to some optimizations that can make accessing and changing information in the array faster than with arrays of other types.
Woman doing handstand with a computer
The default definition of a byte is a data type that contains 8 bits. With 8 bits, a byte can contain values between zero and 255. If the byte is signed, meaning it can also contain negative values, one bit is dedicated to indicating the positive or negative property of the byte, leaving only 7 bits. in which to store the information. A signed byte can have a value between -127 and 127.
However, the size of a byte is not always implemented in the same way in certain computer languages. This could be the result of a lack of detail in the language specifications, or due to changes in system architectures where an 8-bit byte is not possible, or incredibly inefficient. The use of a byte in an array does not always mean that it will be an 8-bit sequence of bytes. On some systems, a byte array can easily be made up of 16-bit words or 32-bit long integers.
A byte is usually the smallest scalar data type available in a language, so they can be used to read binary files for decoding. A byte array can also be used in certain cases to pass prebuilt image information to a graphics card. There are functions in some libraries in low-level computer languages that use byte arrays as return types.
Once a byte array has been allocated in memory, it is possible to use some optimizations to increase access speed. When creating arrays with sizes that are powers of two, such as 16, 32, or 64, bit shift operations can be used to increase the speed of calculating an indexed address, which can be especially useful when dealing with multidimensional arrays. . In languages with direct pointer access, an array can be traversed using the very fast increment and decrement operators.
