A Huffman code is a prefix code that is commonly used for lossless data compression.

Huffman coding uses a specific method for choosing the representation for each symbol, resulting in a prefix code (sometimes called "prefix-free codes")

• the bit string representing some particular symbol is never a prefix of the bit string representing any other symbol
• The algorithm derives a variable-length code table for encoding source symbols, using estimated probability or frequency of occurrence for each possible value of the source symbol.
• More common symbols are generally represented using fewer bits than less common symbols.
• computes frequency f(c) for each character c
• encodes high-frequency characters with short code
• no code word is a prefix of another code word
• uses optimal encoding tree to determine the code words