File Compression System

Huffman Algorithm is an efficient way for file Compression and Decompression. This program exactly follows Huffman algorithm. It reads frequent characters from input file and replace it with shorter binary codeword. The original file can be produced again without loosing any bit.

File compression is a way for a computer to make a digital file or group of files as small as possible. Compressed files, sometimes called ZIP files, are a common type of compressed file. Computer programs compress files by replacing long sequences of the same characters with shorter lines. On the other hand, data compression can be done in many more ways.

The most popular and simple method is called Huffman Encoding Algorithm

Huffman coding uses a specific method for choosing the representation for each symbol, resulting in a prefix code (sometimes called "prefix-free codes", that is, the bit string representing some particular symbol is never a prefix of the bit string representing any other symbol). Huffman coding is such a widespread method for creating prefix codes that the term "Huffman code" is widely used as a synonym for "prefix code" even when such a code is not produced by Huffman's algorithm.

Now coming to my Project, I used Huffman Coding Algorithm to encode the text files and and stored the compressed file with the dictionary. The result was an average of more than 50 Percent compression ratio. Then using the dictionary, I programmed a Decompressing code that decodes the compressed file.

The project and the working steps have been explained in detail on Github.