Encodes consecutive repeated characters as a single character and count. (for example AAAAA -> 5A)

Compresses data by assigning shorter bit codes to more frequent characters using a binary tree.

• Compress and decompress files using RLE or Huffman
• CLI-based usage with custom file output
• Built entirely in C

Clone the repository and compile the program:

git clone https://github.com/veronin1/boots.git
cd boots
make

Flags:

• -c -> Compress
• -d -> Decompress
• -rle -> Use Run-Length Encoding
• -huff -> Use Huffman Coding

./boots (-c|-d) (-rle|-huff) <input_file> <output_file>


# Compress a file using Run-Length Encoding (RLE)
./boots -c -rle input_file output.rle

# Compress a file using Huffman Coding
./boots -c -huff input_file output.huff

# Decompress an RLE-compressed file
./boots -d input.rle output_file

# Decompress a Huffman-compressed file
./boots -d input.huff output_file

• Create -auto flag to automatically decide which compression algorithm to use based on file content or type
• Implement file extension check to determine which decompression algorithm to apply
• Use more complex file compression techniques

• Fundamentals of data compression
• Data structures like trees, queues, and arrays
• Implementation of Run-Length Encoding (RLE) in C
• Implementation of Huffman Coding (tree-based compression)
• Use of priority queues for building Huffman Trees
• Bit-level manipulation for compact binary encoding/decoding
• File I/O in C
• Recursive algorithms for tree traversal
• Dynamic memory management using malloc and free
• Handling edge cases and validating compression accuracy