Variable-length Quantity - General Structure

General Structure

The encoding assumes an octet (an eight-bit byte) where the most significant bit (MSB), also commonly known as the sign bit, is reserved to indicate whether another VLQ octet follows.

VLQ Octet
7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20
A Bn

If A is 0, then this is the last VLQ octet of the integer. If A is 1, then another VLQ octet follows.

B is a 7-bit number and n is the position of the VLQ octet where B0 is the least significant. The VLQ octets are arranged most significant first in a stream.

Read more about this topic:  Variable-length Quantity

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