A Fast Data Compression Method

ID
TR-83-10
Authors
Samuel T. Chanson and Jee Fung Pang
Publishing date
August 1983
Abstract
This paper presents a new data compression scheme. The scheme uses both fixed and variable length codes and gives a compression ratio of about one-third for English text and program source files (without leading and trailing blank suppression). This is very respectable compared to existing schemes. The compression ratio for numbers ranges from 52% for numbers in scientific notation to 65% for integers. The major advantage of the scheme is its simplicity. The scheme is at least six times faster than Huffman's code and takes about half the main memory space to execute.