Self-delimiting programs

Self-delimiting programs are computer instructions designed to know where they end without external markers. Imagine a book that signs off naturally at the last page, so you don't need a separate signal to find the end. This property is crucial in computing and information theory, especially for efficient data transmission and encoding, because it allows programs or messages to be parsed correctly without additional length info. Self-delimiting programs are foundational in areas like data compression and coding theory, enabling reliable recognition of complete instructions or messages when reading or processing streams of data.