Characters are made up of bytes (one or more depending on type of encoding, ascii uses one byte per character), but they're both made up of bits :) 
warn unpack 'b*', 'a';
warn pack 'b*', '10000110';
__END__
10000110 at - line 1.
a at - line 2.

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The bits/bytes stuff is basic CS knowledge (you should google for a tutorial).

MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"
I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).
** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

In reply to Re: What is the difference between sending bytes and characters over sockets? by PodMaster
in thread What is the difference between sending bytes and characters over sockets? by Gorby

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