7 Bit Integer compression, in Python.

def decode7bit(bytes):
    bytes = list(bytes)
    value = 0
    shift = 0
    while True:
        byteval = ord(bytes.pop(0))
        if(byteval & 128) == 0: break
        value |= ((byteval & 0x7F) << shift)
        shift += 7
    return (value | (byteval << shift))


def encode7bit(value):
    temp = value
    bytes = ""
    while temp >= 128:
        bytes += chr(0x000000FF & (temp | 0x80))
        temp >>= 7
    bytes += chr(temp)
    return bytes


x = encode7bit(345)
print decode7bit(x)