Sure, the benefit of base-256 is that a 0 maps to a byte with all 0's in the binary representation of the integer -- it's nothing specific to gzip. But on its f

Sure, the benefit of base-256 is that a 0 maps to a byte with all 0's in the binary representation of the integer -- it's nothing specific to gzip. But on its face, 12345x256^8+71 = 1234500000071 is just wrong and only works once you realize that it's combining integers from different number systems.