17 Aug 2004
CS 5244: Self-Study
11
Unique prefix property
¡A = 0 B = 100
C = 1010 D = 1011
R = 11
C = 1010 D = 1011
R = 11
¡No bit string is a prefix of any other bit string
¡For example, if we added E=01, then A (0) would be a prefix of E
¡Similarly, if we added F=10, then it would be a prefix of three other encodings (B=100, C=1010, and D=1011)
¡The unique prefix property holds because, in a binary tree, a leaf is not on a path to any other node