Move-to-front transform

The move-to-front (MTF) transform is an encoding of data (typically a stream of bytes) designed to improve the performance of entropy encoding techniques of compression. When efficiently implemented, it is fast enough that its benefits usually justify including it as an extra step in data compression algorithm.

This algorithm was first published by Boris Ryabko under the name of "book stack" in 1980.[1] Subsequently, it was rediscovered by J.K. Bentley et al. in 1986,[2] as attested in the explanatory note.[3]

  1. ^ Ryabko, Boris Yakovlevich [in Russian] (1980). "Data compression by means of a "book stack"" (PDF). Problems of Information Transmission. 16 (4): 265–269. Zbl 0466.94007.
  2. ^ Bentley, Jon Louis; Sleator, Daniel Dominic Kaplan; Tarjan, Robert Endre; Wei, V. K. (1986). "A Locally Adaptive Data Compression Scheme". Communications of the ACM. 29 (4): 320–330. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.69.807. doi:10.1145/5684.5688. S2CID 5854590.
  3. ^ Ryabko, Boris Yakovlevich [in Russian]; Horspool, R. Nigel; Cormack, Gordon Villy (1987). "Comments to: "A locally adaptive data compression scheme" by J. L. Bentley, D. D. Sleator, R. E. Tarjan and V. K. Wei". Comm. ACM. 30 (9): 792–794. doi:10.1145/30401.315747. S2CID 16138142.