The data compression book: Featuring fast, efficient data compression techniques in C

The Data Compression Book Second Edition The Data Compression Book is the most authoritative guide to data compression techniques available. This second edition has been updated to include fractal compression techniques and all the latest developments in the compression field. All the code in the previous edition has been updated to run with today's compilers and has been tested on multiple platforms to ensure flawless performance. You'll learn to write C programs for nearly any environment as you explore different compression methods. Nelson and Gailly discuss the theory behind each method and apply the techniques involved to shrink data down to a minimum. Each technique is illustrated with a complete, functional C program that not only demonstrates how data compression works, but it also can be incorporated into your own data compression programs. You'll also get detailed benchmarks demonstrating the speed and compression ability of each technique. The code in this book has been tested on a variety of platforms and compilers including Microsoft Visual C++ 1.5 with MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.22; Borland C++ 4.0 and 4.5 with MS-DOS 5.0 and 6.22; Symantec C++ 6.0 and 7.0 with MS-DOS 5.0 & 6.22; Interactive Unix System 3.2 with the portable C compiler; Solaris 2.4 with the SunSoft compiler; and Linux 1.1 with the Gnu C Compiler. Topics Include:

• The Shannon-Fano and Huffman coding techniques
• Adaptive Huffman coding techniques
• Lossy compression
• The JPEG compression algorithm
• Fractal compression techniques
• Arithmetic coding
• Dictionary compression methods

MARK NELSON is a regular contributor to various technical publications including Dr. Dobbs Journal, Computer Language, and the C User's Journal. JEAN-LOUP GAILLY, a software consultant with more than 15 years of programming experience, wrote the compression code of the freeware zip archiver and is the author of the gzip data-compression program.