ENTCHECK(1)

💖 ENTCHECK(1) — the group chat guide to entcheck 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to entcheck, section 1 of the General Commands Manual 🎀 she's a little command-line cutie and she does exactly one thing but she does it so well: she estimates the entropy of a stream. that's it. that's the whole vibe. ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

entcheck — estimates the entropy of a stream 💫

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

entcheck [-N <bits>] [-s <streams>]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea, bestie 🍓 — entcheck estimates the entropy of its standard input. like, you pipe stuff into her and she's like "hmm, how surprised am i by this?" 👑

the way she does it is so smart actually: she uses the previous bits bits (16 by default) to predict the next bit. then she estimates the entropy based on the level of surprise — which is to say, the base-2 logarithm of the probability of seeing the given string of bits. math girlies stay winning fr fr 🧮💅

and now the plot twist 🙈 — in some scenarios, like the output of an 8-bit DAC, some bits are special. in that case, entropy needs to be predicted per bit over the width of the input data. that's where the -s option comes in: she sets the width of the input data for exactly this situation. she's got range, no cap 🫶

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -N <bits> — specifies the number of bits to use to predict the next bit. lowkey the whole personality of the tool lives here 💜
• -s <streams> — specifies the number of streams to use. (this is the one that sets the width of the input data in that per-bit, 8-bit-DAC situation we just talked about 👆) 🌈

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

infnoise(8) — go read her too, she's iconic ⭐

ok that's the whole page bestie, she's short and she's sweet and she ATE 💅✨

signing off from the General Commands Manual — this one's dated June 22 2018, mwah 💖🦋🌸