Bits, bytes, and all the rest

Question

I need clarification on what some stuff really represents.
My project is to build a Huffman tree (no problem). However, all tutorials and examples that I can find on the net take from a text file with the format <letter> <frequency>, such as:
a 12
b 3
c 4
d 8
Mine has to read any kind of file, such as a text file.
For example, if myDoc.txt contains:
This is my document.
I have to have my program read the bytes from the infile, count the frequency of each byte from 0 through 255. Then the frequencies must be placed on a list of single node Huffman trees, and build the tree from this list.
I think I am having trouble because I just cannot get straight what a byte "looks like". My project says ensure you are not counting the "letters" of the infile, but the "bytes".
So what does a byte look like? When I read in the file as above, what is a "byte" representation of the letter T, i,h, etc?
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Ok, Roshelle....here is a little history lesson that you should have learned or should have been explained to you by your instructor before he/she gave you the assignment to construct a Huffman tree.
A bit is a binary digit which is either 0 or 1 -- it is the only thing that a computer truly understands. Think about it this way, when you turn on the light switch, the light comes on (the computer sees it as a 1), when you turned the switch off, the light goes out (the computer sees it as a 0).
There are 8 bits to a byte -- you can think of it as a mouthful. In a binary number system, 2 to the power of 8 gives you 256. So, computer scientists decided to use this as a basis for assigning a numerical value to each letter of the English alphabets, the digits 0 to 9, some special symbols as well as invisible characters. For example, 0 is equivalent to what is known as null, 1 is CTRL A, 2 is CTRL B, etc...... (this may vary depending on the computer manufacturers).
Now, what was your question again (make sure that you count the byte and not the letters)?
As you can see, when you read data from a file, there may be characters that you don't see such as a carriage return, line feed, tab, etc.....
And like they said, the rest is up to the students!
V.V.