- write a character for each bit of the data
- contiguous identical characters are assumed to be multiple bits of the same piece of data
0is assumed to be written as a zero and ignored when reading- round the size of the flags data up to the nearest byte and pad the extra space with
0
0000CBAA
- A is a two bit value
- B and C are 1 bit values
- the 4 most-significant bits are
0