Patent ID: 8400335

Claim:
A computer program product for compressing an input data stream to produce a compressed output data stream, 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: determining whether a number of at least two consecutive data units in the input data stream match the number of consecutive data units in a history buffer of previously received data units in the input data stream; in response to determining that the number of consecutive data units in the input data stream match the number of consecutive data units in the history buffer, generating a copy pointer symbol including data indicating a copy pointer symbol referencing previously received data units in the history buffer and indicating the determined number of consecutive data units; determining a relative displacement count in the history buffer at which the number of matching consecutive data units start; determining from a variable length code table an encoding of the relative displacement count in the history buffer; indicating in the generated copy pointer symbol the determined encoding of the relative displacement count; and outputting the copy pointer symbol in the compressed output data stream.