Zero suppression

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zero suppression is the removal of redundant zeroes from a number. This can be done for storage, page or display space constraints or formatting reasons, such as making a letter more legible.

Examples:

• 00049823 - 49823
• 7.678600000 - 7.6786
• 0032.3231000 - 32.3231

It is also a way to store a large array of numbers, where many of them are zero, by omitting the zeroes, and instead storing the indices and values of the numbers that are non-zero. It only makes sense if the extra spaced used for storing the indices (on average) is smaller than the space saved by not storing the zeroes.

Example:

• Original array: 0, 1, 0, 0, 2, 5, 0, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
• Pairs of index and data: {2,1}, {5,2}, {6,5}, {10,4}

[edit] Source

• Telecom Glossary 2000