Variable-length quantity

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Variable-length quantity
You are encouraged to solve this task according to the task description, using any language you may know.

Implement some operations with respect to Variable-length Quantity, at least including convertions between normal number on the language and the binary representation of the Variable-length Quantity for that number. Any variants is acceptable.

Task : With above operations,

• convert this two numbers 0x200000 (2097152 in decimal) and 0x1fffff (2097151 in decimal) into sequence of octet (an eight-bit byte) format;
• display these sequence of octet;
• convert these sequence of octet format back to numbers, and check they are equal to original numbers.

D

This implements a Variable-length Quantity struct for an ulong integer.

<lang d>module vlq ; private import std.string ;

struct VLQ { // variable length quantity (unsiged long, max 63-bit)

   ulong value ;
   static ulong V2I(ubyte[] v) { return VLQ.init.from(v).value ; }
   uint extract(ubyte[] v) {
       ulong t = 0; 
       uint idx = 0, limit = v.length - 1 ;
       if(8 < limit) limit = 8 ;       
       while ((idx < limit) && ((v[idx] & 0x80) > 0))
           t = (t << 7) | (0x7f & v[idx++]) ;
       if(idx > limit)
           throw new Exception("too large for ulong or invalid format") ;
       else
           value = (t << 7) | v[idx] ;
       return idx + 1 ;
   }
   VLQ from(ubyte[] v) { extract(v) ; return this ; }    
   @property
   ubyte[] toVLQ() {
       ubyte[] v = [(0x7f & value)] ;
       ulong k = value >>> 7 ;
       while(k > 0) {
           v ~= (k & 0x7f) | 0x80 ;
           k >>>= 7 ;
       }
       if(v.length > 9)
           throw new Exception("value too large ") ;
       return v.reverse ;
   }
   @property
   string toStr() {
       string s ;
       foreach(e ; toVLQ)
           s ~= std.string.format("%02X:", e) ; 
       return "("~s[0..$-1]~")" ;
   }
   static ulong[] split(ubyte[] b) {
       ulong[] res ;
       VLQ v ;
       for(int i = 0, cnt = 1 ; i < b.length ; cnt++) { 
           auto k = v.extract(b[i..$]) ;
           res ~= v.value ;
           i += k ;
       } 
       return res ;    
   }
   alias value this ; // this allow VLQ works like ulong, eg add, multiply etc.

}</lang>

test code :

<lang d>import std.stdio ; import vlq ; void main() {

   VLQ a = VLQ(0x7f), b = VLQ(0x4000), c ;
   writefln("a:%8x = %s\nb:%8x = %s\nc:%8x = %s", 
       a.value, a.toStr, b.value, b.toStr, c.value, c.toStr) ;
   c = (a + 1) * b  ;
   a = c - 1 ;
   b = VLQ.init.from(a.toVLQ) ;
   a <<= 1 ;
   // convert ulong to octet sequence : VLQ(number).toVLQ
   writefln("a:%8x = %s\nb:%8x = %s\nc:%8x = %s", 
       a.value, a.toStr, b.value, b.toStr, c.value, c.toStr) ;
   //write them to a binary file 
   std.file.write("vlqtest.bin", a.toVLQ ~ b.toVLQ ~ c.toVLQ) ;
   //read them back
   auto buf = cast(ubyte[]) std.file.read("vlqtest.bin") ;     
   writefln("File length : %d", buf.length) ;
   auto cnt = 0 ;
   // convert octet sequence to ulong : (VLQ.init).from(octet sequence)
   foreach(v; VLQ.split(buf)) 
       writefln("%d:%8x = %s", 1 + cnt++, v, VLQ(v).toStr ) ; 

}</lang>

output:

a:      7f = (7F)
b:    4000 = (81:80:00)
c:       0 = (00)
a:  3ffffe = (81:FF:FF:7E)
b:  1fffff = (FF:FF:7F)
c:  200000 = (81:80:80:00)
File length : 11
1:  3ffffe = (81:FF:FF:7E)
2:  1fffff = (FF:FF:7F)
3:  200000 = (81:80:80:00)