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Is Huffman coding dead?

Ist Huffman-Codierung tot?

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Abstract

In recent publications about data compression, arithmetic codes are often suggested as the state of the art, rather than the more popular Huffman codes. While it is true that Huffman codes are not optimal in all situations, we show that the advantage of arithmetic codes in compression performance is often negligible. Referring also to other criteria, we conclude that for many applications, Huffman codes should still remain a competitive choice.

Zusammenfassung

In neueren Publikationen über Datenkompression werden oft arithmetische Codes anstatt der gebräuchlicheren Huffman-Codes als Stand der Wissenschaft vorgeschlagen. Obwohl Huffman-Codes nicht unter allen Umständen optimal sind, zeigen wir, daß der Vorteil arithmetischer Codes zur Kompression häufig vernachlässigbar klein ist. Unter Berücksichtigung auch anderer Kriterien schließen wir, daß für viele Anwendungen Huffman-Codes auch weiterhin eine gute Alternative darstellen.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Information and Language Studies, University of Chicago, 1100 E. 57-th Str., 60637, Chicago, IL, USA

    A. Bookstein

  2. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Bar-Ilan University, 52900, Ramat-Gan, Israel

    S. T. Klein

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  1. A. Bookstein
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  2. S. T. Klein
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Bookstein, A., Klein, S.T. Is Huffman coding dead?. Computing 50, 279–296 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02243872

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