Patent ID: 8692696

Claim:
A computer program product for generating a code alphabet for use by a deployed program to determine codewords for words having a length of b bits used in a computing system, wherein the codewords have an average codeword length less than b, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therein that executes to perform operations, the operations comprising: generating a first code alphabet having a first number of symbols that provide variable length codings of the words, wherein a first average codeword length of the codewords produced using the symbols in the first code alphabet is smaller than the codeword length (b) of the words; merging the symbols in the first code alphabet into a second number of groups of the symbols in the first code alphabet, where the second number is less than the first number; and generating a second code alphabet having the second number of symbols, wherein a second average codeword length of the codewords produced using the symbols in the second code alphabet is smaller than the codeword length (b) of the words, and wherein the second code alphabet comprises the code alphabet used by the deployed program.