title: How to write a bitstream
body: <p>I'm thinking about writing some data into a bit stream using <strong>C</strong>. There are two ways come in mind. One is to concatenate variable bit-length symbols into a contiguous bit sequence, but in this way my decoder will probably have a hard time separating those symbols from this continuous bit stream. Another way is to distribute same amount of bits for which symbol and in that way the decoder can easily recover the original data, but there may be a waste of bits since the symbols have different values which in turn cause many bits in the bit stream being zero(this waste bits I guess).</p>
  
  <p>Any hint what I should do?</p>
  
  <p>I'm new to programming. Any help will be appreciated.</p>