Note that the data type sizes don’t need to match, so it’s no problem to have a union with, for example, a 32-bit and a single 8-bit integer, the 8-bit value is simply truncated if needed.

I never noticed it before, but after doing some java programming and coming back to C/C++ I've noticed there isn't a 'byte' data type.Why is that? It seems wrong to use a 'char' to store data that ...