User talk:Becky Pippen/Numeric Storage

I like this code and it shows you have put a decent amount of thought into it. I too take pleasure in writing algorithms and would like to give you my critique of the code. However before I start I want to impress upon you that the logic of your implementation is not only sound it is pretty efficient.

Your approach in decodeCharTo15Bits surprised me (in a good way), I had to stop and really think about why I would have done it another way. As it stands you are using 3 string additions, and 4 function calls that work with strings. The trouble is that this is a more expensive way of processing the string then just doing it all at once to a single integer. I'd rewrite it as: <lsl>integer decodeCharTo15Bits(string ch) {

   integer val = llBase64ToInteger(llStringToBase64(ch));

   if((val & 0xE0000000) ^ 0xE0000000)
       return -1; //The character is not 3 bytes.

   return  ((val & 0x0f000000) >> 12) +
           ((val & 0x003f0000) >> 10) +
           ((val & 0x00003f00) >>  8) - 0x1000;

}</lsl> There is more error detection that can be done before decoding but I don't have time now to write it..

Similarly I would rewrite encode15BitsToChar', which eliminates the need for hexChar2.

<lsl>string encode15BitsToChar(integer num) {

   // Check the incoming range

   if (num < 0 || num >= 0x8000) {
       // illegal input -- do whatever is appropriate
       return "�";
   }

   // Bias the incoming numeric value by 0x1000 to avoid illegal Unicode codes:

   num += 0x1000;
   
   // construct UTF-8 layout:
   
   num = 0xE0808000 | (num << 12) | ((num << 10) & 0x3f0000) | ((num << 8) & 0x3f00);

   // Convert the UTF-8 into a 16-bit Unicode character:

   return llGetSubString(llBase64ToString(llIntegerToBase64(num)), 0, 0);

}</lsl>

-- Strife ^{(talk|contribs)} 04:50, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Strife! Much appreciated. I like how you are able to squeeze a few more bytes out of any code you see :-) For now I'll just leave both implementations available for comparison for educational purposes. Becky Pippen 18:17, 6 January 2010 (UTC)