Compact serialization for variable-length integers

Compact serialization for variable-length integers

Variable-length integers: bytes are a MSB base-128 encoding of the number.
The high bit in each byte signifies whether another digit follows. To make
the encoding is one-to-one, one is subtracted from all but the last digit.
Thus, the byte sequence a[] with length len, where all but the last byte
has bit 128 set, encodes the number:

  (a[len-1] & 0x7F) + sum(i=1..len-1, 128^i*((a[len-i-1] & 0x7F)+1))

  Properties:
  * Very small (0-127: 1 byte, 128-16511: 2 bytes, 16512-2113663: 3 bytes)
  * Every integer has exactly one encoding
  * Encoding does not depend on size of original integer type