Class: Huffman Compress

This class is intented to perform Huffman static compression on files with a PHP script.

Such compression is essentially useful for reducing the size of texts by about 43% ; it is at its best when working with data containing strong redundancies at the character level -- that is, the opposite of a binary file in which the characters would be spread over the whole ASCII alphabet.

It is questionable whether anyone would want to do such an operation with PHP, when C implementations of much stronger and more versatile algorithms are readily avaible as PHP functions. The main drawback of this script class is slowness despite processing intensiveness (7 to 8 seconds to compress a 300Kb text, about 25 seconds to expand it back).

This class will therefore probably find more of a pedagogical purpose more than anything else. That is the context it was written in, anyway.

Compression class

Elements common to Compression and Expansion

Personal extra functions (required nonetheless)

Expansion class

Installation instructions

Abstract info, License and Terms of Use, Use and Function Reference