Text data compression algorithms

Abstract

The chapter contains three classical text compression algorithms. Variants of these algorithms are implemented in practical compression software, in which they are often combined together, or with other elementary methods. Moreover, we present all-purpose methods, that is, methods in which no sophisticated modeling of the statistics of texts is done. An adequate modeling of a well-defined family of texts may increase significantly the compression when coupled with the coding algorithms of the chapter.

Contents

• Huffman coding
• Dynamic Huffman coding
• Arithmetic coding
• Ziv-Lempel coding

Note

This is Chapter 12 of the Algorithms and Theory of Computation Handbook edited by M. Atallah and published by CRC Press, Boca Raton (1998). The entire Handbook is roughly 1000 typeset pages, and is organized around the major subject areas of the discipline.