熵编码(entropy encoder)

Description

An entropy encoder is a data encoding method that achieves lossless data compression by encoding a message with "wasted" or "extra" information removed. In other words, entropy encoding removes information that was not necessary in the first place to accurately encode the message. A high degree of entropy implies a message with a great deal of wasted information; english text encoded in ASCII is an example of a message type that has very high entropy. Already compressed messages, such as JPEG graphics or ZIP archives, have very little entropy and do not benefit from further attempts at entropy encoding. 

English text encoded in ASCII has a high degree of entropy because all characters are encoded using the same number of bits, eight. It is a known fact that the letters E, L, N, R, S and T occur at a considerably higher frequency than do most other letters in english text. If a way could be found to encode just these letters with four bits, then the new encoding would be smaller, would contain all the original information, and would have less entropy. ASCII uses a fixed number of bits for a reason, however: it’s easy, since one is always dealing with a fixed number of bits to represent each possible glyph or character. How would an encoding scheme that used four bits for the above letters be able to distinguish between the four-bit codes and eight-bit codes? This seemingly difficult problem is solved using what is known as a "prefix-free variable-length" encoding. 

In such an encoding, any number of bits can be used to represent any glyph, and glyphs not present in the message are simply not encoded. However, in order to be able to recover the information, no bit pattern that encodes a glyph is allowed to be the prefix of any other encoding bit pattern. This allows the encoded bitstream to be read bit by bit, and whenever a set of bits is encountered that represents a glyph, that glyph can be decoded. If the prefix-free constraint was not enforced, then such a decoding would be impossible. 

Consider the text "AAAAABCD". Using ASCII, encoding this would require 64 bits. If, instead, we encode "A" with the bit pattern "00", "B" with "01", "C" with "10", and "D" with "11" then we can encode this text in only 16 bits; the resulting bit pattern would be "0000000000011011". This is still a fixed-length encoding, however; we’re usin