What ==== This directory contains a C implementation of Golomb encoding (and decoding): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golomb_coding The specific implementation is based on 'Compression and Coding Algorithms' by Alistair Moffat & Andrew Turping, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. Also included are run-length encoding/decoding functions (because Golomb coding works with positive integers), and a deflate (zip) encoding/decoding function lifted from zlib. How === The way to use the implementation is to take a character array you want to encode, run-length encode it, and then Golomb code it. To decode, apply Golomb decoding and then the run-length decoding. Performance =========== Is pretty good. See "Compressing Bloom Filters" in Section 5.1 of this paper (this code was written to compress bloom filters for one of our projects). http://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/handle/1853/25467/GT-CS-08-02.pdf