Hi - I'm adding binary encoding support for decimal to Impala, and have one question about some wording in the spec:
"binary: precision is not limited, but is required. The minimum number of bytes to store the unscaled value should be used" https://github.com/apache/parquet-format/blob/master/LogicalTypes.md#decimal When the spec says 'the minimum number of bytes', which of the following does that mean: * the minimum number of bytes to store a particular unscaled value must be used (so for '8' it's one byte, for '550' it's two bytes and so on), and the encoded length is value dependent. or * the minimum number of bytes for the given precision must be used (so all values in a given column should have the same byte length). If it's the latter, the implementation is much easier because FIXED_LEN_BYTE_ARRAY becomes a special case of BINARY, but the former offers more opportunity for compact representations on a high precision column that in practice has low precision values. Thanks, Henry
