Analysis and comparison of the performances of data compression algorithms for text file

Abstract

Number of data compression algorithms were implemented and used in most of the applications currently used. But the performances of those algorithms are different for differnt data types and differnt file structures. Identifying the suitable algorithm for a particular data type is a difficult task. This research was carried out in order to identify the best suiting algorithm to compress a text file. Six loss less algorithms were selected and a prototype application was developed using those algorithms and a set of text files were compressed using it to identify the performances. As per author’s findings, it was 7 identified that Shannon Fano algorithm is the most suitable algorithm to compress a text file.