characters in a byte

[Muhammad Imad Qureshi]

Someone asked me following questions and I didn't know the answer

If you have to store a ticker, how many characters can you store in a 4 byte integer.

I thought that each byte will have 8 bits so the answer would be 32. But apparently that is not correct. She told me the correct answer is 2 raise to the power of 32 and then divide by 26 (for 26 alpha characters).

Can someone please explain?

Thanks
Imad

[fred rosenberger]

a four-byte integer does have 32 bits - and each one can be 'on' or 'off'. That gives you 2^32 possible combinations of bits.

But I'm not sure how she got the "divide by 26" part. That doesn't make sense to me.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Surely it would be (int) (32 * log2 / log 26)? But that would be awkward to implement: easiest done by using base 26 numbers.

[William Brogden]

Besides, a ticker will need 26 alpha and 10 numeric characters.

Or you could use Baudot which uses only 5 bits so you could get 6 characters in 30bits

Bill

[Henry Wong]

Muhammad Imad Qureshi wrote:Someone asked me following questions and I didn't know the answer

If you have to store a ticker, how many characters can you store in a 4 byte integer.

I thought that each byte will have 8 bits so the answer would be 32. But apparently that is not correct. She told me the correct answer is 2 raise to the power of 32 and then divide by 26 (for 26 alpha characters).

Can someone please explain?

Thanks
Imad

Working out the math... "2 raise to the power of 32 and then divide by 26 (for 26 alpha characters)" --> (2 ^ 32) / 26 --> 165,191,049 characters.

So, basically, a 4 byte integer, should hold enough information to fill an encyclopedia. Hmmm... there is definitely something wrong here...

Henry