Other Systems
Google's Protocol Buffers "zig-zag encoding" is a system similar to sign-and-magnitude, but uses the least significant bit to represent the sign and has a single representation of zero. This has the advantage to make variable-length quantity encoding efficient with signed integers.
Apache Thrift is another such method developed by Facebook in 2007 that is similar to Protocol Buffers for scalable cross-language services development and to serialize the data in efficient way.
Another approach is to give each digit a sign, yielding the signed-digit representation. For instance, in 1726, John Colson advocated reducing expressions to "small numbers", numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. In 1840, Augustin Cauchy also expressed preference for such modified decimal numbers to reduce errors in computation.
Read more about this topic: Signed Number Representations
Famous quotes containing the word systems:
“No civilization ... would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“What is most original in a man’s nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn’t have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.”
—Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)