Huffman Encoder (C++)

A small C++ project that implements Huffman coding to compress and decompress data.

Huffman coding is a lossless compression technique that assigns shorter bit-codes to more frequent symbols and longer bit-codes to less frequent symbols, using a binary tree (the Huffman tree).

• A basic Huffman encoder/decoder implementation in C++
• Code that uses standard C++ features (including smart pointers) to build and traverse the Huffman tree

1. Count frequency of each symbol in the input
2. Build a Huffman tree using a priority queue (min-heap)
3. Generate prefix-free binary codes by traversing the tree
4. Encode the input into a bitstream using the generated codes
5. Decode by walking the tree according to bits

This repository is intentionally lightweight and should compile with a standard g++ toolchain.

g++ -std=c++17 -O2 *.cpp -o huffman

If your source files live in a src/ directory, run the command from the repo root and adjust the glob accordingly:

g++ -std=c++17 -O2 src/*.cpp -o huffman

Because different implementations wire up their CLI differently, run the produced binary directly:

./huffman

If you want, tell me what arguments your main() expects (e.g. encode <in> <out> / decode <in> <out>) and I can update this README with the exact usage.

• Bit-level I/O (packed bits) for better compression ratios
• Persisting the codebook/tree in the output format
• Benchmarks and test vectors

Add a LICENSE file if you plan to reuse/distribute this project.