Is Huffman coding dead?

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.ZusammenfassungIn neueren Publikationen über Datenkompression werden oft arithmetische Codes anstatt der gebräuchlicheren Huffman-Codes als Stand der Wissenschaft vorgeschlagen. Obwohl Huffman-Codes nicht unter allen Umständen optimal sind, zeigen wir, daß der Vorteil arithmetischer Codes zur Kompression häufig vernachlässigbar klein ist. Unter Berücksichtigung auch anderer Kriterien schließen wir, daß für viele Anwendungen Huffman-Codes auch weiterhin eine gute Alternative darstellen.

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