What Is Huffman Coding?

Huffman coding is discussed, which is a data compression method resulting in a smaller file size. David A. Huffman is credited with creating the algorithm in 1952; hence, the name. How does it function, then? You can send a message to a friend concerned about your data plan. In Huffman coding, shorter codes are given to the more frequently used characters, taking advantage of the fact that some characters are more common than others. As an illustration, the letter 'e,' one of the most common in English, might be given a short code such as '01,' while the letter 'z,' much less common, might be given a more extended code such as '1101110,' to reflect its rarity. This is known as variable-length encoding, and it's used when the frequency with which a given character appears in the data affects the length of the code assigned to that character. The Huffman algorithm uses the frequency of occurrence of each character in the message to generate a binary tree in which each leaf node represents a character, and the path from the root node to the leaf node represents the code for that character. Huffman coding is attractive because it permits information to be entirely recovered after being compressed. This is because there is no duplication among the codes used to represent different characters. Moreover, Huffman coding's lossless compression capabilities are a significant selling point. To put it another way, the compressed data can be uncompressed back to its original form with zero information loss. Due to this, Huffman coding is excellent for text files and other data that must be transmitted or stored with minimal waste of physical space. What happens if two characters share the same frequency? The Huffman algorithm then arbitrarily selects one to receive the shorter code. It functions similarly to a tiebreaker. There you have it; an overview of Huffman coding. It's a clever algorithm that uses the repetition of individual characters to achieve lossless data compression. In 1952, David A. Huffman gave us this fantastic innovation.