How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes

Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes by benj111 on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @04:59AM (#48989789)

Off the top of my head. Compilers. You may know that a value has known 1s and 0s and unknowns. This would allow you to represent that for optimisation purposes.

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Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes by Imustaskforhelp on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @06:36AM (#48990469)

Arturo[0] language supports true,false and maybe. I really liked that idea actually, worth mentioning here.

so valid arturo code can be like (picked from their in-a-nutshell documentation)

i1: true

i2: false

i3: maybe

[0]: https://arturo-lang.io/documentation/in-a-nutshell

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Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes by taneq on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @07:45AM (#48990982)

Everyone hates null but (in database land, and arguably in other programming) it just means “no data.”

(As an aside, I found the characterisation of null as being a “billion dollar mistake” to be unfair. Those who don’t acknowledge null are doomed to reimplement it, probably poorly, or to have the unknowns in their logic remain unknown unknowns.)

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Re:How to pack ternary numbers in 8-bit bytes by mcherm on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @08:33AM (#48991507)

The "mistake" was not in providing a way to represent "no data", it was in providing no way to represent "this definitely HAS" data.

Languages that correct the problem have two separate types (eg: Foo & Option<Foo>) meaning "definitely a Foo" and "a Foo but it might have no data". Java just has Foo, meaning "a Foo but it might have no data" but no way to represent "definitely a Foo".

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