From: Greg Colvin (gcolvin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-12-07 19:28:50
From: <brangdon_at_[hidden]>
>
> If you really care about bytes, I have found it can be worth including
> support for variable-length encoding of integers at the serialisation
> level. For example, if an int holds the value 100 it can be stored in a
> single byte rather than 4. Doing this at the serialisation level tends to
> be quicker and give better results than compressing the archive as a
> separate step. Often the variable-length encoding is quicker than a
> fixed-length encoding, because it leaves fewer bytes to transfer around
> later.
Yes, and you can arrange for the variable length encoding to not
change the sort order of the resulting byte strings.