On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 3:05 PM, R. Michael Weylandt <michael.weyla...@gmail.com> <michael.weyla...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Nov 7, 2013, at 22:24, Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 1:43 PM, R. Michael Weylandt >> <michael.weyla...@gmail.com> <michael.weyla...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> Chris's point is more subtle: the typical computer will store the number >>> 65536 in a single byte, but it will also store 4 and 8 in one byte. >> >> Well, 65536 won't fit in a single byte, nor even in two (only just). A >> typical binary representation of 65536 would take 3 bytes, or 4 for a >> common integer type: 0x00 0x01 0x00 0x00 (big-endian). > > Quite right -- meant C's int type, (machine word) not char. My mistake!
Sure. Assuming at least 32-bit words, yes, that's correct. Of course, this is still just proving that it's {possible, not possible} to compress specific values, while the OP claimed to compress anything. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list