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2026/05/03 14:25 skander [Minimum required bits] 2026/05/02 21:21 skander [Minimum required bits] 2026/04/28 22:09 skander [Minimum required bits] 2026/04/28 21:59 skander 2026/04/28 21:30 skander 2026/04/28 21:00 skander createdGo Next revision		Previous revision 2026/05/03 14:25 skander [Minimum required bits] 2026/05/02 21:21 skander [Minimum required bits] 2026/04/28 22:09 skander [Minimum required bits] 2026/04/28 21:59 skander 2026/04/28 21:30 skander 2026/04/28 21:00 skander createdGo
data:packing [2026/04/28 21:00] – created skander		data:packing [2026/05/03 14:25] (current) – [Minimum required bits] skander
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	====== Packing ======		====== Packing ======
-	'Packing' refers to the act of using the minimum required bits to encode information.	+	'Packing' refers to the practice of representing information using only the minimum number of bits required, and arranging those bits contiguously in memory or in a data stream. In other words, it avoids wasting unused bits when encoding values.
		+	In data representation and programming, packing is often used to combine multiple values into a compact layout. This may involve packing fields into tuples or aggregate types, especially when memory usage, cache efficiency, storage size, or binary serialisation performance matters.
		+
		+	===== Minimum required bits =====
		+
		+	Encoding information as binary digits, or bits, requires an encoding scheme that defines how values are mapped to bit patterns and how those bit patterns are decoded back into values.
		+
		+	For a finite set of possible values, the minimum fixed-width binary representation requires enough bits to uniquely encode every value. This bit width is determined by the cardinality of the value set.
		+
		+	<code>
		+	ceil(log2(number of possible values))
		+	</code>