creating very small types

[andrea]

Jeremy Bowers wrote:

>On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 22:17:07 +0200, andrea wrote:
>
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>>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 :)
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>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... ;-)
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No it's not for homework but for learning purposes...
I understand I can't do it easily in python, but maybe I could define a
new type in C and use it to do those dirty works, what do you think?