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McoreD Posted 21 years ago
Science & IT

KiB, MiB, KB, MB are prefixes or suffixes?

Hi Guys,

By definition: prefix is a type of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affix that precedes the to which it can attach. A suffix is an that succeeds the to which it can attach.

So when you say 700 MiB, is "MiB" really a prefix or a suffix? It's amazing to see almost every popular article use the phrases "binary prefixes", "SI prefixes" etc.
For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefix
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

Why they use the word "prefix" instead of "suffix" is beyond me. Can anybody please explain?

Thank you in advance,
McoreD
  

Top answer

And can you tell me what is MiB and KiB?

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4 Answers
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I think those all are abberviations.........And can you tell me what is MiB and KiB?
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Hi Ivantalk,

Thanks for the reply. That surprises me. So none of them are either prefixes or suffixes but abbreviations?

If you are interested to know what MiB and KiB, then here are two excellent articles about Binary abbreviations (prefixes).

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I think when people say such terms are prefixes, they're specifically referring to the abbreviation itself. What I mean is that the "B" stands for Bits in MiB and KiB and Bytes in MB and KB, and they get prefixed with kilo (1,000), mega (1,000,000), giga (1,000,000,000) etc.
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The "prefix" they are referring to is the multiplier for the "binary" units (abbreviated "B"). So in the "MiB" part of "700 MiB" (which I would call the units rather than a "suffix"), "Mi" is the prefix to the "B" base units.
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