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In computer science and information theory, a Huffman code is a particular type of optimal prefix code that is commonly used for lossless data compression.The process of finding or using such a code is Huffman coding, an algorithm developed by David A. Huffman while he was a Sc.D. student at MIT, and published in the 1952 paper "A Method for the Construction of Minimum-Redundancy Codes".
The normal Huffman coding algorithm assigns a variable length code to every symbol in the alphabet. More frequently used symbols will be assigned a shorter code. For example, suppose we have the following non-canonical codebook: A = 11 B = 0 C = 101 D = 100 Here the letter A has been assigned 2 bits, B has 1 bit, and C and D both have 3 bits.
Huffman coding is a more sophisticated technique for constructing variable-length prefix codes. The Huffman coding algorithm takes as input the frequencies that the code words should have, and constructs a prefix code that minimizes the weighted average of the code word lengths. (This is closely related to minimizing the entropy.)
The picture is an example of Huffman coding. Colors make it clearer, but they are not necessary to understand it (according to Wikipedia's guidelines): probability is shown in red, binary code is shown in blue inside a yellow frame. For a more detailed description see below (I couldn't insert a table here). Date: 18 May 2007: Source: self-made
An algorithm is fundamentally a set of rules or defined procedures that is typically designed and used to solve a specific problem or a broad set of problems.. Broadly, algorithms define process(es), sets of rules, or methodologies that are to be followed in calculations, data processing, data mining, pattern recognition, automated reasoning or other problem-solving operations.
Second and third bits: Encoding method used for this block type: 00: A stored (a.k.a. raw or literal) section, between 0 and 65,535 bytes in length; 01: A static Huffman compressed block, using a pre-agreed Huffman tree defined in the RFC; 10: A dynamic Huffman compressed block, complete with the Huffman table supplied; 11: Reserved—don't use.
Examples of the latter include redundancy in language structure or statistical properties relating to the occurrence frequencies of letter or word pairs, triplets etc. The minimum channel capacity can be realized in theory by using the typical set or in practice using Huffman, Lempel–Ziv or arithmetic coding. (See also Kolmogorov complexity.)
Modified Huffman coding is used in fax machines to encode black-on-white images . It combines the variable-length codes of Huffman coding with the coding of repetitive data in run-length encoding . The basic Huffman coding provides a way to compress files with much repeating data, like a file containing text, where the alphabet letters are the ...