Scribd
Upload
9 views6 pages

Haufmann Coding

Huffman coding is a lossless data compression algorithm that assigns variable-length prefix codes to characters based on their frequencies, ensuring no ambiguity in decoding. The process involves building a Huffman Tree from input characters and traversing it to assign codes. The algorithm constructs the tree in a bottom-up manner using a min heap to prioritize nodes with lower frequencies.

Uploaded by

pbte6q
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
9 views6 pages

Haufmann Coding

Huffman coding is a lossless data compression algorithm that assigns variable-length prefix codes to characters based on their frequencies, ensuring no ambiguity in decoding. The process involves building a Huffman Tree from input characters and traversing it to assign codes. The algorithm constructs the tree in a bottom-up manner using a min heap to prioritize nodes with lower frequencies.

Uploaded by

pbte6q
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 6

Huffman Coding

Huffman coding is a lossless data compression algorithm. The idea is to assign variable-
length codes to input characters, lengths of the assigned codes are based on the
frequencies of corresponding characters.
The variable-length codes assigned to input characters are Prefix Codes, means the codes
(bit sequences) are assigned in such a way that the code assigned to one character is not
the prefix of code assigned to any other character. This is how Huffman Coding makes
sure that there is no ambiguity when decoding the generated bitstream.
Let us understand prefix codes with a counter example. Let there be four characters a, b,
c and d, and their corresponding variable length codes be 00, 01, 0 and 1. This coding
leads to ambiguity because code assigned to c is the prefix of codes assigned to a and b.
If the compressed bit stream is 0001, the de-compressed output may be “cccd” or “ccb”
or “acd” or “ab”.
See this for applications of Huffman Coding.
There are mainly two major parts in Huffman Coding
1. Build a Huffman Tree from input characters.
2. Traverse the Huffman Tree and assign codes to characters.

Algorithm:

The method which is used to construct optimal prefix code is called Huffman coding.
This algorithm builds a tree in bottom up manner. We can denote this tree by T
Let, |c| be number of leaves
Steps to build Huffman Tree
Input is an array of unique characters along with their frequency of occurrences
and output is Huffman Tree.
1. Create a leaf node for each unique character and build a min heap of all leaf
nodes (Min Heap is used as a priority queue. The value of frequency field is
used to compare two nodes in min heap. Initially, the least frequent
character is at root)
2. Extract two nodes with the minimum frequency from the min heap.

3. Create a new internal node with a frequency equal to the sum of the two
nodes frequencies. Make the first extracted node as its left child and the
other extracted node as its right child. Add this node to the min heap.
4. Repeat steps#2 and #3 until the heap contains only one node. The
remaining node is the root node and the tree is complete.
Let us understand the algorithm with an example:
character Frequency
a 5
b 9
c 12
d 13
e 16
f 45
Step 1. Build a min heap that contains 6 nodes where each node represents
root of a tree with single node.
Step 2 Extract two minimum frequency nodes from min heap. Add a new
internal node with frequency 5 + 9 = 14.

Illustration of step 2

Now min heap contains 5 nodes where 4 nodes are roots of trees with single
element each, and one heap node is root of tree with 3 elements
character Frequency
c 12
d 13
Internal Node 14
e 16
f 45
Step 3: Extract two minimum frequency nodes from heap. Add a new internal
node with frequency 12 + 13 = 25

Illustration of step 3

Now min heap contains 4 nodes where 2 nodes are roots of trees with single
element each, and two heap nodes are root of tree with more than one nodes
character Frequency
Internal Node 14
e 16
Internal Node 25
f 45
Step 4: Extract two minimum frequency nodes. Add a new internal node with
frequency 14 + 16 = 30
Now min heap contains 3 nodes.
character Frequency
Internal Node 25
Internal Node 30
f 45
Step 5: Extract two minimum frequency nodes. Add a new internal node with
frequency 25 + 30 = 55

Now min heap contains 2 nodes.


character Frequency
f 45
Internal Node 55
Step 6: Extract two minimum frequency nodes. Add a new internal node with
frequency 45 + 55 = 100

Now min heap contains only one node.


character Frequency
Internal Node 100
Since the heap contains only one node, the algorithm stops here.
Steps to print codes from Huffman Tree:
Traverse the tree formed starting from the root. Maintain an auxiliary array.
While moving to the left child, write 0 to the array. While moving to the right
child, write 1 to the array. Print the array when a leaf node is encountered.
Steps to print code from HuffmanTree

The codes are as follows:


character code-word
f 0
c 100
d 101
a 1100
b 1101
e 111

You might also like