An efficient decoding technique for Huffman codes

• Published in: Information processing letters Vol. 81; no. 6; pp. 305 - 308
• Main Authors: Chowdhury, Rezaul Alam, Kaykobad, M., King, Irwin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 31.03.2002; Elsevier Science; Elsevier Sequoia S.A
• Subjects: Algebra; Applied sciences; Binary system; Codes; Complete binary tree; Computer science; control theory; systems; Data processing. List processing. Character string processing; Data structures; Decision trees; Exact sciences and technology; Information theory; Information, signal and communications theory; Mathematics; Memory organisation. Data processing; Number theory; Sciences and techniques of general use; Software; Static Huffman code; Studies; Telecommunications and information theory; Data structures; Static Huffman code; Complete binary tree; Binary tree; Coding; Complete graph; Huffman code; Decoding technique; Decoding; Technique; Data structure; Static code; Algorithm
• ISSN: 0020-0190; 1872-6119
• DOI: 10.1016/S0020-0190(01)00243-5

We present a new data structure for Huffman coding in which in addition to sending symbols in order of their appearance in the Huffman tree one needs to send codes of all circular leaf nodes (nodes with two adjacent external nodes), the number of which is always bounded above by half the number of symbols. We decode the text by using the memory efficient data structure proposed by Chen et al. [Inform. Process. Lett. 69 (1999) 119–122].