From: Clark Cox (clarkcox3@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Jan 18 2005 - 17:17:25 CST
On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 23:16:31 +0100 (CET), Philippe VERDY
<verdy_p@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > If one should philosophize on the question of general multi-byte encodings
> > (or rather "transformation formats"), then UTF-BSS uses a leading byte the
> > number of bytes displayed in a unary number format, numbers of base 1. In
> > fact, in a computer, it is more efficient to use binary numbers :-), so I
> > would probably put a binary number there for instead. One could still use
> > the unary number idea in order to indicate the length of the binary numbers.
>
> If I want to philosophe, the only UNARY number that exists is ZERO.
> Unary number(s!) is not making an arithmetic.
> I suppose you meant BINARY throughout... because numbers of base 1 DON'T EXIST!
>
> (just ask yourself what is the definition of a base for numbers, and think about powers of this base to scale each digit: 1^n equals 1 for scaling every digit position n, so all digits scale by the same factor. To be a unique representation of numbers in that system, the only satisfying integer is zero...)
One could argue that tally marks are a unary numbering system :) Each
digit has a value of 1:
1 = 1
2 = 11
3 = 111
4 = 1111
5 = 11111
6 = 111111
7 = 1111111
-- Clark S. Cox III clarkcox3@gmail.com http://www.livejournal.com/users/clarkcox3/ http://homepage.mac.com/clarkcox3/
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