Word (computing)

Word and its variations are computing terms for sets of data that is processed as a unit. For development on Mac OS, a "word" typically refers to 16 bits, or 2 bytes, of data.

Variations

 * A halfword consists of 8 bits, or 1 byte, of data.
 * A longword (or doubleword) consists of 32 bits, or 4 bytes, of data.
 * A quadword consists of 64 bits, or 8 bytes, of data.
 * A double-quadword consists of 128 bits, or 16 bytes, of data.