Well others have already explained why what you're trying to do is a bad idea. Maybe if you told us why you're trying to do something like that we might be able to help find a better solution though.

But, for your information, one reason why this just won't work is that pack is always byte aligned. That's why (H5)* changes every third char. H is half a byte/char, so H2 reads a full one, H4 reads two, and H5 reads two and a half. But the next iteration aligns itself on the next char and simply ignores the half byte that was unread. So you're just losing data, not shifting any bits.

In reply to Re: Losing Bits with Pack/Unpack by Eily
in thread Losing Bits with Pack/Unpack by o0lit3

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