bits

Documentation

Index

• func BigToCompact(n *big.Int) uint32
• func CompactToBig(compact uint32) *big.Int

Functions

func BigToCompact

func BigToCompact(n *big.Int) uint32

BigToCompact converts a whole number N to a compact representation using an unsigned 32-bit number. The compact representation only provides 23 bits of precision, so values larger than (2^23 - 1) only encode the most significant digits of the number. See CompactToBig for details.

func CompactToBig

func CompactToBig(compact uint32) *big.Int

CompactToBig converts a compact representation of a whole number N to an unsigned 32-bit number. The representation is similar to IEEE754 floating point numbers. Like IEEE754 floating point, there are three basic components: the sign, the exponent, and the mantissa. They are broken out as follows:

• the most significant 8 bits represent the unsigned base 256 exponent
• bit 23 (the 24th bit) represents the sign bit
• the least significant 23 bits represent the mantissa ------------------------------------------------- | Exponent | Sign | Mantissa | ------------------------------------------------- | 8 bits [31-24] | 1 bit [23] | 23 bits [22-00] | -------------------------------------------------

The formula to calculate N is:

N = (-1^sign) * mantissa * 256^(exponent-3)

This compact form is only used in bitcoin to encode unsigned 256-bit numbers which represent difficulty targets, thus there really is not a need for a sign bit, but it is implemented here to stay consistent with bitcoind.