Encoding of String "a" using huffman algorithm

Question

I tried calculating the Shannon entropy for a which is 0.. I am confused how huffman would encode and store this, as it's programmatically impossible to store string "a" with 0 bits in a computer system.

Mark Adler · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-13 00:55:38Z

1

Indeed the code for a single symbol would be zero bits. However you have to answer some other questions.

How is the code itself transmitted to the receiver?
How does the receiver know that it is done decoding?

To answer those questions, you'd need more bits in the stream for the receiver.

answered May 13, 2017 at 0:55

Mark Adler

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