Question

I have a structure that I am converting to a byte array of length 37, then to a string from that.

I am writing a very basic activation type library, and this string will be passed between people. So I want to shorten it from length 37 to something more manageable to type.

Right now:

• Convert the structure to a byte array,
• Convert the byte array to a base 64 string (which is still too long).

What is a good way to shorten this string, yet still maintain the data stored in it?

Thanks.

Answer 1

In the general case, going from an arbitrary byte[] to a string requires more data, since we assume we want to avoid non-printable characters. The only way to reduce it is to compress before the base-whatever (you can get a little higher than base-64, but not much – and it certainly isn’t any more “friendly”) – but compression won’t really kick in for such a short size. Basically, you can’t do that. You are trying to fit a quart in a pint pot, and that doesn’t work.

You may have to rethink your requirements. Perhaps save the BLOB internally, and issue a shorter token (maybe 10 chars, maybe a guid) that is a key to the actual BLOB.