Donald Arseneau wrote:
Mike McCarty <mike.mccarty@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
There are lossless compression algorithms for which what you
said is not true.
I can't believe that. You can have a one-bit flag to indicate
compression on or off. If the compression algorithm produces
more output than input, then you can save the flag "0" plus the
original file contents. If the compression is an improvement then
you save the flag "1" plus the compressed data. So successfully
compressed files are one bit larger than they could have been,
with the benefit that uncompressible files do not get bloated by
more than one bit.
But you just *changed* algorithms. If you read carefully what
I wrote, in full, you'll see that I said that there is
*another* algorithm producing the same output, except one bit
longer, for files which actually get smaller, and one bit longer
than the original for files which get larger.
Read carefully what I wrote, and I think you'll see things in
a different light.
Surely you don't claim that one single algorithm can produce
different outputs when run successively with the same input?
Mike
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