Variable-Length Prefix Codes With Multiple Delimiters

Let m
₁
, m
₂
, . . . , mt be a fixed set of natural integers given in ascending order. A multi-delimiter code D
_m1,...,mt
consists of t words of the form 1
^mi
0 and all other binary words with suffixes having one of the forms 01
^mi
0 that cannot occur in other places of a word, i = 1, . . . , t. Completeness, universality, and density characteristics of multi-delimiter codes are proved. Encoding of integers by multi-delimiter codes is considered in detail. For these codes, fast byte aligned decoding algorithms are also discussed. The comparison of compression rate and decoding speed of Fibonacci codes, (s, c)-dense codes and different multi-delimiter codes is presented. By many useful properties, multi-delimiter codes are superior to Fibonacci codes.