Case study
To wrap up this chapter, and the book, let's build a basic image compression tool. It will take black and white images (with 1 bit per pixel, either on or off) and attempt to compress it using a very basic form of compression known as run-length encoding. You may find black and white images a bit far-fetched. If so, you haven't enjoyed enough hours at http://xkcd.com!
I've included some sample black and white BMP images (which are easy to read data into and leave a lot of opportunity to improve on file size) with the example code for this chapter.
We'll be compressing the images using a simple technique called run-length encoding. This technique basically takes a sequence of bits and replaces any strings of repeated bits with the number ...
Get Python: Master the Art of Design Patterns now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
