Sun StorageTek 5800 System Client API Reference Guide

The Canonical String Decode Operation

The inverse of the canonical string encoding is used in the following places:

Example 4–1 Virtual View Lookup Operation

If you take a value V and encode it into a string S, and then perform the canonical decode operation on S to get a new value V’. Does V always equal V’? The answer is yes in most cases, but not always.

What is actually guaranteed is the weaker statement that if encode(V) = S and if decode(S)=V’, then encode(V’) is also equal to S.