Huffman coding


Huffman coding

(algorithm)A data compression technique which varies thelength of the encoded symbol in proportion to its informationcontent, that is the more often a symbol or token is used, theshorter the binary string used to represent it in thecompressed stream. Huffman codes can be properly decodedbecause they obey the prefix property, which means that nocode can be a prefix of another code, and so the complete setof codes can be represented as a binary tree, known as aHuffman tree. Huffman coding was first described in a seminalpaper by D.A. Huffman in 1952.

Huffman coding

A statistical compression method that converts characters into variable length bit strings. Most-frequently occurring characters are converted to shortest bit strings; least frequent, the longest. Compression takes two passes. The first pass analyzes a block of data and creates a tree model based on its contents. The second pass compresses the data via the model. Decompression decodes the variable length strings via the tree. See LZW.