CareerCup

What the .... ?

I added some formatting. Look at it again.

I still don't understand the question. Say you need to encode the following, what would the encoded result be?

<product sku="9820Y" size="small" type="tshirt">
<itinerary>
<sold>283</sold>
<onhold>232</onhold>
<returned>23</returned>
</itinerary>
</product>

Oops, the xml didn't show up in the last post...here it is again (hopefully)
&lt;product sku="9820Y" size="small" type="tshirt"&gt;
&lt;itinerary&gt;
&lt;sold&gt;283&lt;/sold&gt;
&lt;onhold&gt;232&lt;/onhold&gt;
&lt;returned&gt;23&lt;/returned&gt;
&lt;/itinerary&gt;
&lt;product&gt;

Ok, so this is a grammar, so here are the first two steps:
Encode[product]
-> Hash["product"] Encode[sku] Encode[size] Encode[type] END Encode[itinerary] END
-> Hash["product"] Hash["sku"] 9820Y Hash["size"] small Hash["type"] tshirt END Hash["itinerary"] END Encode[sold] Encode[onhold] Encode[returned] END END
-> Hash["product"] Hash["sku"] 9820Y Hash["size"] small Hash["type"] tshirt END Hash["itinerary"] END Hash["sold"] END 283 END Hash["onhold"] END 232 END Hash["returned"] END 23 END END END

I think that's right... all the ENDs would be changed to 01 and the hashed values would be looked up in a dictionary.

Ok...thanks!

Sorry, I am still confused, can you post the answers to the questions?
- Coding: Write code to encode xml element (as char *) as Byte *
- Algorithm: Is there anything else you could do to (in many cases) compress this even furthur?

this seems like a compression algorithm question. is there an easy way to encode strings to bytes?

Just apply Huffman's compression algorithm by sorting all the words by their length descending. now the longest words get a value of 0, then next one get 1 and so on..
once you form this, just use the same procedure listed in Corman to form a tree to compress the algorithm.

can not be it done by simplest way, like take ascii of character and add 5 or anything to it. or use Hashed value?

What exactly do u mean? Can you give an example on this?

i had a brain damage after reading this question , oops now the captcha image interperting seems a challenge ... god bless me.

i had a brain damage after reading this question , oops now the captcha image interperting seems a challenge ... god bless me.

I really need sum sleep to digest after reading this question.. :)

Stupid and meaningless question. I hate computer Science.