[Python-Dev] Accepting PEP 3154 for 3.4?

[Tim Peters]

[Antoine]
> Yet another possibility: keep framing but use a variable-length
> encoding for the frame size:
>
> - first byte: bits 7-5: N (= frame size bytes length - 1)
> - first byte: bits 4-0: first 5 bits of frame size
> - remaning N bytes: remaining bits of frame size
>
> With this scheme, very small pickles have a one byte overhead; small
> ones a two byte overhead; and the max frame size is 2**61 rather than
> 2**64, which should still be sufficient.
>
> And the frame size is read using either one or two read() calls, which
> is efficient.

That would be a happy compromise :-)

I'm unclear on how that would work for, e.g., encoding 40 =
0b000101000.  That has 6 significant bits.  Would you store 0 in the
leading byte and 40 in the second byte?  That would work.

2**61 = 2,305,843,009,213,693,952 is a lot of bytes, especially for a pickle ;-)