Comment

Comment by happybits

CUSTOMER

Hackerman, I need an impressive icon for my website. It should be 5x5 pixels big and look like a rabbit. Can you please draw it for me?

HACKERMAN

Draw!? Bah! I don’t need any graphic program for that. I am Hackerman. I will code it for you. You will get the image next week.

CUSTOMER

Next week?? But…

HACKERMAN

No buts! I just need to read about how the GIF file format works, then I can create the image in no time.

[TIME PASSES]

After spending some evenings, Hackerman gets the main idea of how the GIF file format works and the compression algorithm called LZW. With that knowledge, he succeeded in creating the image within an hour.

Hackerman calculated that the binary of the image should be as follows:

47 49 46 38 39 61 00 00 00 00 70 00 00 2c 00 00 00 00 05 00 05 00 81 11 11 11 FF FF FF D5 D7 D9 00 00 00 07 0F 80 01 00 83 01 82 84 85 88 82 8A 85 02 85 81 00 3b

So he just opened his code editor, saved the file as rabbit.gif, and sent it to his customer. Boom! Easy-peasy!

Do you want understand the GIF-file format and be as cool as Hackerman?

parent happybits 2 years ago

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