in reply to Re (tilly) 7: What data is code?
in thread What data is code?

(length(compress($text)) < 0.8*length($text))

Is the magic number "0.8" coming from intuition/experience/choice of an example?

Or do you have some reference or pointers for that threshold (not that I expect this in such an answer, it would just be nice to know where it comes from)?

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com

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Re (tilly) 9: What data is code?
by tilly (Archbishop) on Nov 23, 2001 at 21:05 UTC
    Intuition.

    I just wanted to pick a number between what I expected to see with normal text and encrypted. Theoretically there should be no compression. Realistically people "encrypt" things with xor, and then you will be able to get some compression, just not very much.

    UPDATE
    Fixed typo that mkmcconn caught, and thinko that blakem pointed out.

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