Algorithm 673: Dynamic Huffman coding

  • Authors:
  • Jeffrey Scott Vitter

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, Brown University, Providence, R.I.

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS)
  • Year:
  • 1989

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Abstract

We present a Pascal implementation of the one-pass algorithm for constructing dynamic Huffman codes that is described and analyzed in a companion paper. The program runs in real time; that is, the processing time for each letter of the message is proportional to the length of its codeword. The number of bits used to encode a message of t letters is less than t bits more than that used by the well-known two-pass algorithm. This is best possible for any one-pass Huffman scheme. In practice, it uses fewer bits than all other Huffman schemes. The algorithm has applications in file compression and network transmission.