encode whole numbers to an array of [protobuf-style varint bytes](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/encoding#varints) and also decode them.
if you also require the length (number of bytes) that were required to decode the integer you can access it via `varint.decode.bytes`. this is an integer property that will tell you the number of bytes that the last .decode() call had to use to decode.
similar to `decode.bytes` when encoding a number it can be useful to know how many bytes where written (especially if you pass an output array). you can access this via `varint.encode.bytes` which holds the number of bytes written in the last encode.