Decoding of erasures and errors for certain RS codes by decreased redundancy

A method is presented for decoding erasures and errors in Reed-Solomon (RS) codes over GF
(q)
. It uses fewer operations when the code is of medium or low rate, when the number of erasures is relatively large, and when
q-1
is prime. This method can be used in conjunction with the customary method of decoding RS codes and can decrease the maximum number of operations needed to decode certain codes. This procedure is also applicable to generalized RS codes of length
q
over GF
(q)
.