On 24 October 2017 at 12:04, Ben Bacarisse <ben.use...@bsb.me.uk> wrote: > Paul Moore <p.f.mo...@gmail.com> writes: > >> On 24 October 2017 at 11:23, Ben Bacarisse <ben.use...@bsb.me.uk> wrote: >>> For example, run the complete works of Shakespeare through your program. >>> The result is very much not random data, but that's the sort of data >>> people want to compress. If you can compress the output of your >>> compressor you have made a good start. Of course what you really want >>> to be able to do is to compress the output that results from compressing >>> your compressed out. And, of course, you should not stop there. Since >>> you can compress *any* data (not just the boring random stuff) you can >>> keep going -- compressing the compressed output again and again until >>> you end up with a zero-length file. >> >> Oh, and just for fun, if you are able to guarantee compressing >> arbitrary data, then > > It's a small point, but you are replying to a post of mine and saying > "you". That could make people think that /I/ am claiming to have a perfect > compression algorithm.
Sorry. I intended the meaning "If one is able to..." but I was unclear. My bad. >> 1. Take a document you want to compress. >> 2. Compress it using your magic algorithm. The result is smaller. >> 3. Compress the compressed data. The result is still smaller. >> 4. Repeat until you hit 0 bytes. > > Isn't this just repeating what I said? I must has not written is > clearly enough. More accurately, I didn't read it carefully enough. Again sorry. However, I guess it serves as an example of a compression algorithm - we can trivially compress the content of our two posts into a single post with just as much information content, by deleting my post :-) Paul -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
