Discuss the concept of data compression

Data compression is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. The primary goal of data compression is to reduce the size of data, which helps save storage space and transmission bandwidth. There are two main types of data compression: lossless and lossy.

Lossless Compression

• Definition: Lossless compression allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data.
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• Techniques:
  • Huffman Coding: Uses variable-length codes to represent symbols based on their frequencies. Frequently occurring symbols are given shorter codes.
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  • Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW): Builds a dictionary of substrings encountered in the data, replacing recurring substrings with shorter codes.
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  • Run-Length Encoding (RLE): Encodes sequences of repeated characters or symbols as a single character and a count.
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• Use Cases: Text files, executable files, and any other data where losing any information is unacceptable.
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• Examples: ZIP, PNG, and GIF formats.