len() should always return something

[Tim Chase]

Marcus Wanner wrote:
> First one to correctly decompress the value 0 into an ASCII
> character wins the title of the world's most capable hacker :p

Bah...uncompressing the value 0 into *an* ASCII character is 
easy.  Uncompressing it into the *original* ASCII character from 
which it was compressed (with the aforementioned compression 
method) becomes a bit trickier ;-)

-tkc