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. 1. Introduction It is paradoxical that, as the technology for storing and transmitting information has gotten cheaper and more effective, interest in data compression has increased. There are many explanations, but most conspicuous is that improvements in media have expanded our sense of what we wish to store. For example, CD-Rom technology allows us to store whole libraries instead of records describing individual items; but the requirements of storing full text easily exceeds the capabilities even of the optical format. Similarly, there is ...

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