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I was actually under the impression compression algorithms tend to work over a bitstream, but I can't entirely confirm that.
by dwattttt 1y ago
I was actually under the impression compression algorithms tend to work over a bitstream, but I can't entirely confirm that.
- vintermann 1y agoThey output a bitstream, yeah but I don't know of anything general purpose which effectively consumes anything smaller than bytes (unless you count various specialized handlers in general-purpose compression algorithms, e.g. to deal with long lists of floats)
- Sesse__ 1y agoSome are bit-by-bit (e.g. the PPM family of compressors[1]), but the normal input granularity for most compressors is a byte. (There are even specialized ones that work on e.g. 32 bits at a time.) [1] Many of the context models in a typical PPM compressor will be byte-by-byte, so even that isn't fully clear-cut.
- bede 1y agoA Zstd maintainer clarified this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45251544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45251544 > Ultimately, Zstd is a byte-oriented compressor that doesn't understand the semantics of the data it compresses