the meaning of 42

[109]

Anyway, the meaning of 42 is this. Let's say we have something that lasts for one hour and have a weekly periodicity. And of course, can happen more than one time during the week. Most efficient way to store it is to assign one bit to every hour of the week. So we have 7*24 bits or 7*24/8 = 21 bytes. But, if that something can also start at half an hour, we need twice as many. Hence, RAW(42)!

Comments

[exceeder.livejournal.com]

That is a totally new meaning of 42. I could never guess. It should be fun to search for criteria in such a representation. Like "find me something that happens on Thursdays after rain7pm for not longer than one hour.

And Douglas kept the assertion it was a random number that just popped into his mind. Hm.

[109.livejournal.com]

actually, it's pretty general-purposed. it is good for encoding schedules like "mon-thu 9:00-18:00 (lunch break 13:00-14:00), fri 9:00-15:00 (no lunch break)".

[109.livejournal.com]

actually, UTL_RAW package has a lot of bitwise stuff, so it's not that hard to search.

[sanekk.livejournal.com]

ты коварен