Chapter 1

Introduction

Data compression is, in the context of computer science, the science (and art) of representing information in a compact form. It has been one of the critical enabling technologies for the ongoing digital multimedia revolution for decades.

Most people frequently use data compression software such as zip, gzip and WinZip (and many others) to reduce the file size before storing or transferring it in media. Compression techniques are embedded in more and more software and data are often compressed without people knowing it.

Data compression has become a common requirement for most application software as well as an important and active research area in computer science. Without compression techniques, none of the ever-growing ...

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