Huffman Decompression without keys

Question

Is it possible by any technique to decompress a Huffman image without having keys generated by the Huffman tree?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 12 '16 at 14:35

There are no "keys". If you do not know the code, then you might be able to deduce a fixed code with sufficient examples of coded data and that same data in the clear. That is simply a cryptography breaking job.

If you don't have the code, and you don't have the data in the clear, then there is nothing you can do.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 12 '16 at 14:38

You've got two options. One is to use canonical Huffman codes which have a set patterns of 1s and zeroes for any length. You need to store counts but not the codes themselves. Or you can use adaptive Huffman coding, which starts off with equal codes then rebuilds the tree as data items arrive.

Huffman Decompression without keys

2 Answers2