Re: HPACK, Draft 09, Integer Representation

On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 12:25 AM, Pavel Rappo <pavel.rappo@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I have several questions regarding Integer Representation, if you don't
> mind.
>
> (1) First of all, the section "6.1. Integer Representation" contains a
> link to Wikipedia's VLQ article. The article states that: "...The VLQ
> octets are arranged most significant first in a stream..." (Big Endian
> from the byte stream point of view). On the other hand (from what I
> understand), encoding/decoding algorithms described in the HPACK draft
> works exactly the opposite -- they assume Little Endian:
>
> decode I from the next N bits
>    if I < 2^N - 1, return I
>    else
>        M = 0
>        repeat
>            B = next octet
>            I = I + (B & 127) * 2^M (*)
>            M = M + 7
>        while B & 128 == 128
>        return I
>
> In other words there is: I = I + (B & 127) * 2^M instead of I = I* 2^M
> + (B & 127).
> Either there's an error in the draft or I'm not getting it right. So
> which one is it?
>

​HPACK uses little endian.​



> (2) The second question is this. Does the decoding algorithm "forget"
> to add (2^N - 1) to the result in the end?
> ...
>        while B & 128 == 128
>        return I + 2^N - 1
>
>
"​I" is updated while loop:

       repeat
           B = next octet
           I = I + (B & 127) * 2^M


​                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

           M = M + 7
       while B & 128 == 128

​
​So, initial "I" is not forgotten.​



> though encoding one "remembers" to do this:
>
> if I < 2^N - 1, encode I on N bits
>    else
> (*)   encode (2^N - 1) on N bits
>        I = I - (2^N - 1)
>        while I >= 128
>             encode (I % 128 + 128) on 8 bits
>             I = I / 128
>        encode I on 8 bits
>
(3) And the third question is a minor one. When decoding algorithm
> mentions "I", which "I" exactly is that?
>
> ​​
> decode I from the next N bits
>    if I < 2^N - 1, return I (*)
> ...
>

​"I" comes from next N bits as algorithm exactly says:​

    ​
​
decode I from the next N bits​

HPACK integer encoding uses specific prefix bits, which is described as N
here in algorithm.
So when decoding integer encoded with 7 prefix bits, decode initial "I"
from next 7 bits.

​Best regards,
Tatsuhiro Tsujikawa​



>
> If I'm not mistaken, we don't know it in that point. The whole purpose
> of this code snippet is to get the "I".
>
> -Pavel
>
>