Compile any file to < 1KB

[CptPicard]

... and also, props to you for actually admitting you're wrong and not getting all arrogant, as a lot of "geniuses" around here tend to do. You didn't make too much of an idiot of yourself, which is good. Still can't figure out how you came up with that idea though

[pmasiar]

... and you had the integrity to admit mistake and learn from it. Many other "visionaries" cannot do that. Probably too ashamed of themselves...

Anyway, you learned something. Only person who does not try never fails.

Now, back to regular programming. Nothing more to see here.

[sacherjj]

Oh well, I recently had to use 5-bits (base-32) "digits" so, hell, everything is possible...

Those are baker's nibbles.

[kentl]

This made me remember a quote I liked:

Good judgement comes with experience. Unfortunately, the experience usually comes from bad judgement.

The point is that you learned something. Trial and error is much better than never trying to think "outside the box" at all.

Also to the guy above in the thread. Who said that it would probably be possible to create a program which has "all" permutations of the most common lengths of bits, and enumerate those and just reference the permutation by its enumeration. It doesn't work in the average case. A friend of mine had that exact idea and made a proof in a discrete mathematics course that it's not possible. Of course. If you say that 1 means "the open office binary", you'll have compressed the OO-binary into 1 byte.