[sadgit]

But you still seem to be in agreement that the implementation of the language has a neccesary overhead... printing the operator that indicates code would require another escape sequence, and the overhead of the operator to identify code would mean that some compressible strings dont benefit from compression.

[svantana]

Well of course -- any machine/language is a map from inputs (programs) to outputs, and the pigeon hole principle enforces that if some strings are shortened, others must be lengthened.