A new technique for compression and storage of data

ABSTRACT

The widespread tendency toward storage of large programs and blocks of text has produced a need for efficient methods of compressing and storing data. This paper describes techniques that can, in most cases, decrease storage size by a factor of from two to four. The techniques involve special handling of leading and trailing blanks, and the encoding of other symbols in groups of fixed size as unique fixed point numbers. The efficiency of the system is considered and pertinent statistics are given and compared with statistics for other information coding techniques.

REFERENCES

• 1: Reza, F.M. An Introduction to Information Theory (Chap. 4.). McGraw-Hill, New York, 1961.
• 2: Hagamen, W.D., et al. Encoding verbal information as unique numbers. IBM Systems J. 11, 4 (1974), 273.
• 3: Lesk, M., Compressed text storage. Computer Science Technical Rept. 3 (Nov. 1970), Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J.
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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  E. Data
  E.4 CODING AND INFORMATION THEORY
      Subjects: Data compaction and compression

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS

  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.3 Information Search and Retrieval
          Subjects: Retrieval models

General Terms:
Management

Keywords:
coding techniques, data management, data storage, file maintenance, information retrieval, text compression, utility programs