Prefix code: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 14:42, 29 March 2006

Revision as of 16:33, 8 April 2006

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{{cleanup-date|November 2005}}

A '''prefix code''' is a [[code]] which meets the "prefix property", which is that no code word is a [[Prefix (linguistics)|prefix]] of any other code word in the set. A code which uses code words {0,10,11} meets the prefix property; a code whose set is {0,1,10,11} does not because "1" is a prefix of both "10" and "11".

Prefix codes are also known as '''prefix-free codes''', '''comma-free codes''' or '''instantaneous codes'''; even though [[Huffman coding]] is only one algorithm for deriving prefix codes, prefix codes are also widely referred to as "Huffman codes" (even, confusingly, when the codes were not produced by a Huffman algorithm.)