Question

Currently, I am developing an app that needs to store large amount of text on an iPad. My question is, are algorithms like Huffman coding actually used in production? I just need a very simple compression algorithm (there’s not going to be a huge amount of text and it only needs a more efficient method of storage), so would something like Huffamn work? Should I look into some other kind of compression library?

Answer 1

From Wikipedia on the subject:

Huffman coding today is often used as a “back-end” to some other compression methods. DEFLATE (PKZIP’s algorithm) and multimedia codecs such as JPEG and MP3 have a front-end model and quantization followed by Huffman coding (or variable-length prefix-free codes with a similar structure, although perhaps not necessarily designed by using Huffman’s algorithm).

So yes, Huffman coding is used in production. Quite a lot, even.