A Method for Representing Data Items of Unlimited Length in a Computer Memory

In this paper, a recursive data structure is defined which permits a data item of-unlimited length to be represented in a computer memory. The encoded data are a linear string of symbols which contains a specification of the length of the data item and the data item itself. In a single forward scan of the encoded data string, the length of the data item can be determined and the data item located and/or extracted.