Utility class with static methods for constructing and reading the byte array
representation of format id's.
This utility supports a number of families of format ids. The byte array
form of each family is a different length. In all cases the first two bits
of the first byte indicate the family for an id. The list below describes
each family and gives its two bit identifier in parens.
- (0) - The format id is a one byte number between 0 and 63 inclusive.
The byte[] encoding fits in one byte.
- (1) - The format id is a two byte number between 16384 to 32767
inclusive. The byte[] encoding stores the high order byte
first.
- (2) - The format id is four byte number between 2147483648 and
3221225471 inclusive. The byte[] encoding stores the high
order byte first.
- (3) - Future expansion.
