huffman.m

Huffman

[CODE,COMPRESSION]=HUFFMAN5(P)

P is the probability (or number of occurences) of each alphabet symbol
CODE gives the huffman code in a string format of ones and zeros
COMPRESSION gives the compression rate

Huffman5 works by first building up a binary tree (eg p =[ .5 .2 .15 .15])

Such that the tree always terminates at an alphabet symbol and the symbols furthest away from the root have the lowest probability. The branches at each level are labeled 0 and 1.

For this example CODE would be
1
00
010
011
and the compression rate 1.1111