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From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Algorithm used in compress/decompress ?
Keywords: compress, decompress
Message-ID: <15866@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 16 Apr 91 20:34:43 GMT
References: <vadi.671773259@judy.cs.iastate.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 10

In article <vadi.671773259@judy.cs.iastate.edu> vadi@cs.iastate.edu (Vadivelu Elumalai) writes:
>I want to know the algorithm used in the unix text compression utilities 
>compress/decompress.

It's basically the Limpel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) scheme, which is a dynamic
dictionary method that encodes variable-length "runs" of bytes.

There was a basic summary of compression methods posted just the other
day to the Usenet "comp.compression" newsgroup; if you haven't yet
expired it you should read that article.