ssbc
Figure out proper encoding for small numbers
From https://github.com/dominictarr/bipf/pull/1#issuecomment-685182454
btw, i didn't quite consider this production ready yet. it currently makes small numbers bigger, because a double is 8 bytes. was considering making it into two varints as in scientific notation 10e1000 or something like that, but need to figure out a performant way to encode/decode them
integers is easy, just use varints. all the lengths use varint too, so use the same varint. reading UInt32LE is fast, but since all the fields have a length, then a number already uses a varint. considering I don't know why I didn't just use varint in the first place.
for decimals is more complicated. could do it as two varints: XeY: varint(x)*Math.pow(10, y) but it would probably be better if it was to the power of 2.
that would be something like the internal double representation, surely.
so, in javascript land, probably the easyiest way to get that would be to write to a buffer with writeDoubleLE and then read out the bits that make the parts of the float.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-precision_floating-point_format
first bit is sign, then next 11 bits are exponent then next 53 bits are fraction. so I think just take the sign and fraction and put that in one varint, then the exponent in the other. in javascript I think it would be easiest to do via the buffer, but implementing it in other languages it should be possible to reinterpret the bits of the double as a 64 bit integer.
btw, definitely use Little Endian and not Big Endian. LE has won on modern hardware, and also web assembly.
that's the most obvious way, but there are probably more compact or faster ways