What is LZW Compression?
by Sanju[ Edit ] 2009-06-29 13:34:29
LZW Compression
Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) is a universal lossless data compression algorithm.
LZW compression is the compression of a file into a smaller file using a table-based lookup algorithm invented by Abraham Lempel, Jacob Ziv, and Terry Welch.
Two commonly-used file formats in which LZV compression is used are the GIF image format served from Web sites and the TIFF image format. LZW compression is also suitable for compressing text files.
A particular LZW compression algorithm takes each input sequence of bits of a given length (for example, 12 bits) and creates an entry in a table (sometimes called a "dictionary" or "codebook") for that particular bit pattern, consisting of the pattern itself and a shorter code.
