Huffman coding builds comma-free variable-length codes that need no separators between words.
Evidence
By allocating a bit for each level, a variable-length code is built up in which a leading zero represents the beginning of a new code word up to the maximum length of the code words. This property makes the code comma free, which means it needs no additional bits to separate the variable code words from each other, thus maximizing the efficiency. A code word of length 1 is assigned to the most probable symbol, and longer-length code words are optimally assigned to the lower probability symbols. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2642
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies how a leading zero and level-based allocation make Huffman codes comma-free, eliminating separator bits.
Related
- Variable-length codes can be made comma-free without separator bits (similarity 0.89)
- Huffman coding achieves within one bit of source entropy but scales poorly (similarity 0.82)