hey all,
i just finished learning c++ from the beginner C++ tutorial
series in cprogramming.com...
Now i'm here in the "More advanced topics in C and C++" section. (the first lesson - bitwise operators in c and c++) in that lesson i came across a sentence which i did not understand...
please explain the "(for instance ... bit level)" to me:
how will the 26 letters take up 5 bits only?Another example comes up when dealing with data compression: what if you wanted to compress a file? In principle, this means taking one representation and turning it into a representation that takes less space. One way of doing this is to use an encoding that takes less than 8 bits to store a byte. (For instance, if you knew that you would only be using the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet and didn't care about capitalization, you'd only need 5 bits to do it.) In order to encode and decode files compressed in this manner, you need to actually extract data at the bit level.
(note: i'm well versed with what a bit, nibble and a byte are...)
one more thing...
since i byte = 8 bits... how can you use an encoding that takes less than 8 bits to store a byte?
(i dont know what an encoding is... so explain that as-well)
so my requests in this post are:
1) kindly explain what does Mr. Alex mean by the (for...bit level) sentence (bracketed part)...
2) kindly explain what does Mr. Alex mean by the "encoding that takes up less than 8 bits to store a byte" part...
3) kindle explain what is encoding...