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 ...

C++ is portable in theory, but in practice, you have to build another language (#ifdef’d types, etc.) on top of it. And C++ has significant differences from vendor to vendor, e.g., standards ...