Commit Graph
5 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
ReaperOfVeriod 79914c420e Show the chunk record's leading byte is a per-chunk phase counter; every chunk
has a uniform record length

Follows the alignment result and settles what the leading byte is.

Within one chunk the leading byte steps by a constant and wraps:

  offsets: 1420 1748 2072 2392 2716 3044 3372 3700 4028 4352 ...
  byte0:      0  16   32   48   64   80   96  112  128  144 ...

Sweeping every (step, phase) over all 27 levels:

  fully explained: 1,262 of 1,509 chunks
  by step: 8 -> 51 chunks, 16 -> 554, 32 -> 520, 64 -> 137
  unexplained:  247 chunks across 11 chunk types

So on 1,262 chunks the leading byte carries no per-record information: it is a
deterministic function of the record's index and the chunk's phase, which is a
position marker rather than data. That is why the earlier "16 discrete values,
uniform counts" pattern appeared at all.

ResolvedChunk::bucket_rule returns the (step, phase) when the whole chunk fits and
None otherwise, so the 247 unexplained chunks stay distinguishable and nothing
skips a leading byte on the strength of a rule that does not apply to it.

Every chunk has a uniform record length: 1,509 of 1,509. Length varies BETWEEN
chunks of a type -- one type runs 76 to 104 bytes -- but never within one. This
withdraws the previous commit's "variable-length type", which came from pooling
minlen/maxlen across all of a type's records at once. That is the pooled-claim
error rule 3a exists to prevent, and it is the third time this session a pooled
measurement produced a claim that partitioning reversed. The type is not
variable-length; the chunk is fixed-length and different chunks differ.
2026-10-12 04:21:32 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod a9bf74fc10 Characterise all 77 chunk types: record byte 0 is a bucket index, not data
Characterised every chunk type -- 77 of them, 1,509 chunks, 34,491 records, all 27
levels.

Byte 0 of every record is a small aligned index, not record content. It takes 16
discrete values per chunk type (0x00, 0x10, ... 0xf0) with near-uniform counts
WITHIN each type. Uniform weighting is the tell: a running byte offset would
weight the buckets unevenly, because records differ in size.

  type_id      recs  len  byte0
  0x007d7ec438 2430  328  0x00:162 0x10:162 0x20:162 ... 0xf0:135
  0x00429ec43d 2079  368  0x00:162 0x10:135 0x20:135 ... 0xf0:108
  0x00d76cc453  810  108  0x00:27  0x08:27  0x10:27  ... 0xe8:27   <- steps by 8

The alignment step is per type, not global. The leading byte is a multiple of 8 on
34,432 of 34,491 records but a multiple of 16 on only 33,349 -- the 1,142-record
difference falls in seven types, four of which step by 8. 59 records in three types
break even the 8-byte rule, and that is where the variable-length type lives:
0x00f2ef4275, records 76 to 104 bytes, no single stride to align to.

What the bucket indexes is NOT named. It is reported as CHUNK_RECORD_ALIGNMENT and
record_is_aligned rather than as a parsed field, because naming it would be a guess
while the invariant is solid. The test pins the exact exception set -- 59 records
across 3 types -- so a change there fails loudly.

A measurement I initially got wrong: the first version of the constant claimed a
16-byte multiple on 34,432 records. 34,432 is the multiple-of-8 count; the
multiple-of-16 count is 33,349. Right number, wrong label, and the test caught it.
That is the second time this session a correct number carried a wrong label, after
the tie four-value retraction. Both times the assertion did, which is the argument
for putting these numbers in tests rather than only in prose.

Still open: what the bucket indexes, and the remaining record fields.
2026-10-12 04:18:55 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod ccea53807a Resolve the shrub region bound: the chunk container closes it
The shrub region's end was the last unlocated bound in core_data. It was not
in the core index, and unlike moby->tie it had no successor boundary to chain
against, so the last shrub class in every level ran out to the lump's end and
the aggregates over it (the "3.5M records / 28MB of shrub body") were
artifacts of that oversized span.

Range measured: for each level, from the last shrub class's geometry offset to
the constant trailer. Nothing outside that range is read.

Method: scan forward from the last shrub class for the pair (a) the constant
two bytes f6 7c sitting immediately in front of (b) a chunk signature -- a
16-byte header ending 0xff, ten zero bytes, then four or more 0xf0-tagged
offsets. The two halves are each weak alone, and the halves are measured
separately: the marker pair occurs 25 to 103 times in a 5 to 17 MB lump, so
matching it alone picks dozens of wrong offsets; the chunk shape matches
random data often enough to need four tagged offsets before it is believed.

Result: on all 27 levels the marker sits exactly two bytes before the first
chunk header, and the two parts of the signature are never found apart. No
chunk signature occurs inside any last shrub body, on any level. The three
levels without shrub (10, 25, 26) carry the same marker before the container
that closes tie instead, which is what makes the locator a property of the
region rather than a shrub rule.

Consequences:

- All 358 shrub class bodies are bounded and are whole 8-byte records. That
  was not assertable while the last class in each level ran to the lump's end,
  and it is the check the boundary earns its keep for.
- 9,600 records in total, against the 8,938 previously measurable in
  successor-bounded spans; 662 of them sit in the 24 last-class bodies. The
  shrub region totals 2,033,776 bytes across the 24 levels that have one.
- The chunk container is 25,775,850 bytes across 27 levels (1,236 chunks,
  22,562 records). The container measurements were previously taken over "the
  900,000 bytes before the trailer", a window that did not align to its real
  extent: on level 0 it is 690,302 bytes, and 27 of 1,123 chunks were
  truncated at that invented edge. chunk_containers_resolve_on_every_level now
  reads the region from core_layout instead of measuring backwards from the
  end of the lump.

core_layout takes core_data now: the container's start is the one bound that
cannot be derived from the index. It gains the chunks region, so every byte of
level-specific core_data belongs to a named region. Where the signature is not
found the end stays None -- the region is left visible rather than clamped to
the tail.

Still open: the marker's meaning (constant across 27 levels, at exactly this
position, unnamed) and the shrub body payload's encoding.
2026-10-11 06:20:48 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod 10188416e2 Decode the chunk count field: header byte 14 is the record count
Range measured: all 27 levels, 1123 chunks, over the 900000 bytes before the
constant trailer.

Method: compare header byte 14 against the number of offsets actually resolved
for that chunk.

Result: byte 14 equals the record count on 1123 of 1123 chunks, zero
mismatches. This is the first genuinely decoded field in this container rather
than a measured correlation.

The parser now truncates the offset table to header byte 14, so a stray
tagged word in a chunk's record data cannot silently extend the table and put
the count at odds with its own header.

Two more header bytes are near-constant and read as ASCII: byte 13 takes only
0x45 (1076 chunks) and 0x46 (47); byte 9 takes 0x44 (26), 0x45 (1084) and
0x46 (13). Those are D, E and F -- a three-letter tag at two byte positions
with different distributions. Recorded as suggestive, not established: the
other 14 header bytes are high-entropy and read as ASCII at no shift tried, so
the D/E/F may be incidental. Worth testing against a known type table.

Still open: the 14 opaque header bytes, whether bytes 9 and 13 are type tags,
which record fields are index/length/offset, and whether a chunk is moby_anim.
2026-10-11 04:26:44 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod 681333535a Add a bounds-checked parser for the post-shrub chunk container
gc_formats::chunks parses the container that fills the region after the last
shrub class body and before the constant trailer:

  +0x00  16 bytes, last byte 0xff     (opaque, differs per chunk)
  +0x10  10 zero bytes
  +0x1a  N tagged offsets, top byte 0xf0

Each tagged offset is 0xF0000000 | low24, and a record is read at
chunk_start + low. Resolving that way gives records sharing a field layout,
which is what distinguishes the container from a coincidental byte pattern.

Fields are not named. The 16-byte header is opaque, the 0xf0 tag is
unexplained, and it is not established that a chunk is moby_anim -- a
49 x 368-byte table inside this region is byte-identical on all 27 levels,
which is evidence against that identification. What the parser provides is
chunk and record extraction, which is what the analysis established.

The gated test measures, over all 27 levels: 1123 chunks, 19546 records, 50
distinct strides, 12.4% of byte positions constant across records (per-chunk
range 2.8% to 75%). Chance gives a constant position probability of 1/256^n.

Three things the test got wrong first, recorded because they are the traps:

- A per-chunk threshold of 20% constant positions. Individual chunks run from
  2.8% to 75%; the aggregate is the invariant, not the chunk. Asserting 20%
  per chunk was asserting a property the format does not have.
- Requiring every offset to resolve. 27 chunks truncate at the window edge,
  because the 900000-byte window does not align to chunk boundaries. Counted
  now rather than asserted away.
- read_u32 in the chunk signature check was big-endian while Buf::u32 is
  little-endian. The tag lives in the high byte of a little-endian word, so
  the mismatch made every level report zero chunks while parse_chunk -- which
  goes through Buf -- was correct. Worth remembering that the two paths can
  disagree on a format this young.

Tests: 190 -> 191.
2026-10-11 04:25:18 +02:00