> Text requires at least two bytes (it needs a separator), and negative numbers require yet another byte. True. > it's hard to make a point that they occupy l

> Text requires at least two bytes (it needs a separator), and negative numbers require yet another byte. True. > it's hard to make a point that they occupy less storage No, like I said, it would occupy less storage for sparse data. That's true even with separator characters (2 bytes as against 4). Doubtless there are much better solutions for representing sparse data that aren't human readable. A simple (index, value) dictionary, say. > it can represent infinitely large numbers Right, there's no upper bound beyond the limitations of the systems, although again a non-human-readable bignum format could do this more efficiently.