creating very small types

[Jeremy Bowers]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 22:17:07 +0200, andrea wrote:

> I was thinking to code the huffman algorithm and trying to compress
> something with it, but I've got a problem.
> How can I represent for example a char with only 3 bits??
> I had a look to the compression modules but I can't understand them much...
> 
> Thank you very much
> Any good link would be appreciated of course :)

I think the answer to this question very much depends on why you want to
do this. Easy and fast are pretty opposed in this particular domain in
Python (IMHO anyways, it's an easy bit-bashing language but it's slow
for that), and you're in one of the rare domains where it matters.

The answers strongly vary if you're trying to create something performant,
or just for your learning purposes. Or homework purposes... ;-)