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From: steve@wattres.UUCP (Steve Watt)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: compressing a bit stream
Keywords: data compression
Message-ID: <592@wattres.UUCP>
Date: 5 Aug 90 23:25:01 GMT
References: <26B70D8E.23784@ics.uci.edu> <573@westmark.UU.NET>
Reply-To: steve@wattres.UUCP (Steve Watt)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Steven Watt, Consultant
Lines: 29

In article <573@westmark.UU.NET> dave@westmark.UU.NET (Dave Levenson) writes:
>In article <26B70D8E.23784@ics.uci.edu>, roy@esp.ics.uci.edu (John Roy) writes:
>> Before I go diving into the library, does anybody know of a
>> good/simple data compression algorithm for a stream of random bits.  I

>I suggest that you have a look at the UNIX(tm) utility called compress.
>It performs LZW encoding, and if you're at a UNIX site which runs

Watch out if you plan on using this for ANY commercial application...  There
is a patent (number 4 558 302) held on the LZW algorithm by Unisys, and they
are starting to realize what they have their hands on...

There was a (brief) thread about this in comp.emacs.

The article header is:

From: rms@AI.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: compress patent
Message-ID: <9008011947.AA22165@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 1 Aug 90 19:47:31 GMT
Lines: 101 [ <---  Too long for me to waste bandwidth. ]

[ article body deleted, find it in your spool directory... ]

-- 
Steve Watt
...!claris!wattres!steve		wattres!steve@claris.com also works
If you torture your data long enough, it'll eventually confess.