Re: Number to Letter Counting algorithim needed

On Jun 19, 10:50 am, jgam...@xxxxxxxxx (John M. Gamble) wrote:
In article <46743c54$0$8716$ed261...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,


a) You realize that comp.lang.perl.misc
is the correct place to post
this sort of question, right?

Nonsense. The question had nothing to do
specifically with perl. It has a simple
mathematical element to it, which is of
mathematical interest. After all, the
positional representation of natural
numbers is of a fundamental importance
to mathematics. Thus it's also important
to understand their variations.

At the end of this post I will
explain that the given version
of encoding natural numbers is
clearly more efficient w.r. to
compression than the standard
positional way (no, not really
"better" :-).

For instance, Bill in this thread didn't have
a clue. We are dealing here still with base 26,
and not with base 27. The question was simple
but not everybody was able to understand the
issue.


b) This sort of incrementing can be handled
quite naturally in perl.

Why perl? Most any language, starting with
good ol' C, will be more than adequate.
Don't get offended, but there is an old,
great saying:

"you're shitting above your ***",

meaning in this case that you and Bill are
talking about things which are above your
present understanding.

c) If there are side issues that affect b),
then either CPAN will have somthing to handle
it, or you can ask for help on
comp.lang.perl.misc.

Perhaps perl groups would be ok too.
But it was perfectly proper to ask
here, at sci.math. The question is
first of all of a mathematical interest,
and only then of an interest to computer
science (informatics :-), in particular
to the theory of data compression.
All this within its miniature scale.

***

Lets have just two digits: 0 and 1.
We would like to send an ordered list
of natural numbers, separated by blank.
The "excell" codes are a bit shorter
than the standard positional codes:

1 -- 0
10 -- 1
11 -- 00
100 -- 01
101 -- 10
110 -- 11
111 -- 000
1000 -- 001
1001 -- 010

etc.

The excell encoding will produce lists
which are never longer, and often shorter
than the positionally encoded lists.

Regards,

Wlod

.