2bytes

2bytes is a term used in computing to denote a unit of digital information consisting of two consecutive bytes, equivalent to 16 bits. The notion is central to discussions of data width, memory addressing, and data encoding.

Two-byte values can be stored and interpreted in either big-endian or little-endian order, which affects their byte significance on a given machine. For example, the 16-bit value 0x1234 appears as 12 34 in big-endian and 34 12 in little-endian representations.

Common applications include 16-bit integers (signed and unsigned), and 2-byte character encodings such as UCS-2, which influenced early Unicode representations. UTF-16 uses 2-byte code units for most characters but can require 4 bytes for certain code points via surrogate pairs. In many protocols and file formats, length fields or type identifiers are encoded in 2 bytes to allow values up to 65,535.

Historically, many computer architectures used 16-bit word sizes, making two-byte data units a natural alignment and default width. Today, 2-byte types are still used for compatibility, efficient storage of small integers, and interfaces with legacy systems.

Note: while 2bytes is commonly used to describe this data width, it is not a formal standard name and may appear in different forms in various documents. Clarify context when encountering the term.