Huffman coding
Noun
Meaning
Huffman coding (countable and uncountable, plural Huffman codings)
(computing theory) An entropy-encoding algorithm used for lossless data compression, involving a variable-length code table derived from the estimated probability of occurrence of each symbol (so that more frequent symbols take less space to store).
Examples
Example We give an example of the result of Huffman coding for a code with five characters and given weights.
However, the limitations of Huffman coding should not be overstated; it can be used adaptively, accommodating unknown, changing, or context-dependent probabilities.
Huffman coding with unequal letter costs is the generalization without this assumption: the letters of the encoding alphabet may have non-uniform lengths, due to characteristics of the transmission medium.
Huffman coding today is often used as a "back-end" to some other compression methods.
However, as of mid-2010, the most commonly used techniques for these alternatives to Huffman coding have passed into the public domain as the early patents have expired.
Huffman coding Huffman coding requires one to repeatedly obtain the two lowest-frequency trees.