Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) Encoding and Decoding 📜

This repository contains a Python implementation of the Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) algorithm for data compression and decompression. The algorithm dynamically builds a dictionary to encode and decode variable-length input efficiently.

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Features

• Encoding: Compresses input strings into numeric codes.
• Decoding: Reconstructs the original string from the codes.
• Dynamic Dictionary: Handles variable-length inputs with a growing dictionary.

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How to Run

1. Install Python 3.x from python.org.
2. Save the script as lzw_compression.py.
3. Open a terminal and run:

   python lzw_compression.py

4. Enter a string when prompted to see the encoded and decoded results.

Example Usage

Input:

Enter a message to encode: hello world

Output:

• Encoded: [104, 101, 108, 108, 111, 32, 119, 111, 114, 108, 100]
• Decoded: hello world

Applications

• File compression for storage efficiency.
• Data transmission over networks.
• Lossless compression for text processing.