Move-to-front algorithm

Move-to-front algorithm is a draft programming task. It is not yet considered ready to be promoted as a complete task, for reasons that should be found in its talk page.

Given a symboltable of a zero-indexed array of all possible input symbols this algorithm reversibly transforms a sequence of input symbols into an array of output numbers (indices).
The transform in many cases acts to give frequently repeated input symbols lower indices which is useful in some compression algorithms.

Encoding algorithm

    for each symbol of the input sequence:
        output the index of the symbol in the symboltable
        move that symbol to the front of the symboltable

Decoding algorithm

    # Using the same starting symboltable
    for each index of the input sequence:
        output the symbol at that index of the symboltable
        move that symbol to the front of the symboltable

Example

Encoding the string of character symbols 'broood' using a symboltable of the characters 'a'-to-'z'

Input	Output	SymbolTable
broood	1	'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
broood	1 17	'bacdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
broood	1 17 15	'rbacdefghijklmnopqstuvwxyz'
broood	1 17 15 0	'orbacdefghijklmnpqstuvwxyz'
broood	1 17 15 0 0	'orbacdefghijklmnpqstuvwxyz'
broood	1 17 15 0 0 5	'orbacdefghijklmnpqstuvwxyz'

Decoding the indices back to the original symbol order:

Input	Output	SymbolTable
1 17 15 0 0 5	b	'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
1 17 15 0 0 5	br	'bacdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
1 17 15 0 0 5	bro	'rbacdefghijklmnopqstuvwxyz'
1 17 15 0 0 5	broo	'orbacdefghijklmnpqstuvwxyz'
1 17 15 0 0 5	brooo	'orbacdefghijklmnpqstuvwxyz'
1 17 15 0 0 5	broood	'orbacdefghijklmnpqstuvwxyz'

Task

• Encode and decode the following three strings of characters using the symboltable of the

characters 'a'-to-'z' as above.

• Show the strings and their encoding here.
• Add a check to ensure that the decoded string is the same as the original.

The strings are: 'broood', 'bananaaa', and 'hiphophiphop'. (Note the spellings).

Python

<lang python>from __future__ import print_function from string import ascii_lowercase

SYMBOLTABLE = list(ascii_lowercase)

def move2front_encode(string, symboltable):

   sequence, pad = [], symboltable[::]
   for char in string:
       indx = pad.index(char)
       sequence.append(indx)
       pad = [pad.pop(indx)] + pad
   return sequence

def move2front_decode(sequence, symboltable):

   chars, pad = [], symboltable[::]
   for indx in sequence:
       char = pad[indx]
       chars.append(char)
       pad = [pad.pop(indx)] + pad
   return .join(chars)

if __name__ == '__main__':

   for s in ['broood', 'bananaaa', 'hiphophiphop']:
       encode = move2front_encode(s, SYMBOLTABLE)
       print('%14r encodes to %r' % (s, encode), end=', ')
       decode = move2front_decode(encode, SYMBOLTABLE)
       print('which decodes back to %r' % decode)
       assert s == decode, 'Whoops!'</lang>

Output:

      'broood' encodes to [1, 17, 15, 0, 0, 5], which decodes back to 'broood'
    'bananaaa' encodes to [1, 1, 13, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0], which decodes back to 'bananaaa'
'hiphophiphop' encodes to [7, 8, 15, 2, 15, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2], which decodes back to 'hiphophiphop'