ietf-openpgp
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Re: Y2K is over

2000-07-20 11:38:47
The byte savings you put assumes that you have a disk with a 1 byte block
size. Typically, block sizes on disks are larger. Suppose you have a disk
with an 8K block size. Changing a file from 3000 bytes to 2999 bytes saves
nothing. You only really save space if the file that contains a structure
changes the block count of the file.

There's another effect, too. And that is the code size. Saving 1 byte of
data at the cost of 200 bytes of code is probably not cost effective
because memory is more expensive than disk, and a large code size may
preclude using small devices, like pagers, iButtons, etc. Data is
transient, code is resident.

So yeah, what you said. Saving a byte isn't worth it. If it were up to me,
I would deprecate anything but the 5-byte lengths. Small devices are better
served by only using 5-byte lengths.

        Jon