📦 HuffmanZipper

A custom file compression tool built in C++ that implements the Huffman Coding algorithm. It reduces file sizes by analyzing character frequencies and generating variable-length binary codes, packing data down to the individual bit level.

🚀 Features

• Bit-Level Manipulation: Implements a custom BitWriter and BitReader to handle raw binary I/O, allowing storage of non-byte-aligned codes (e.g., 3-bit sequences).
• Custom File Format: Generates a binary file with a metadata header, enabling the tool to reconstruct the compression tree without external files.
• Deterministic Compression: Uses std::map and tie-breaking logic to ensure the compression tree is identical every time, preventing data corruption across different systems.
• End-to-End Pipeline: Handles the full lifecycle: Frequency Analysis -> Tree Construction -> Encoding -> Decoding.

🛠️ How It Works

1. Frequency Analysis: Scans the input text to count how often each character appears.
2. Tree Construction: Builds a Binary Tree (Priority Queue) where frequent characters (like 'e') are near the top and rare characters (like 'z') are at the bottom.
3. Code Generation: Traverses the tree to assign binary codes. Going left adds a 0, going right adds a 1.
4. Bit Packing: Buffers these codes into 8-bit chunks (bytes) and flushes them to a .bin file.
5. Decompression: Reads the file header to rebuild the exact same tree, then follows the raw bits to trace paths back to the original characters.

💻 Usage

The current build runs a demonstration of the compression flow on a specific file.

1. Prepare the Data: Ensure you have a folder named resources in your project directory containing a file named input.txt.

2. Run the Program:

   ./HuffmanZipper

3. Check Results: The program will generate:

   • resources/output.bin (The compressed binary file).
   • resources/restored.txt (The decompressed text, identical to input).

   It will also print statistics to the console:

   Original Bits for 'a': 8
   Compressed Bits for 'a': 3
   SUCCESS: The math checks out.
   

🔧 Build Instructions

1. Prerequisites: Visual Studio 2022 (or any standard C++ compiler).
2. Clone the repo:

   git clone https://github.com/Dronquavious/HuffmanZipper.git

3. Open Project: Open HuffmanZipper.slnx in Visual Studio.
4. Build: Press Ctrl + Shift + B or click Build Solution.

📂 Project Structure

• src/: Main application source code.
• resources/: Input text files and output binary data.

🧠 Concepts Applied

• Data Structures: Priority Queues (Min-Heap), Binary Trees, Maps.
• Systems Programming: Bitwise operators (<<, >>, &, |), Binary File Streams, Memory Management.

📄 License

This project is open source and under the MIT License. Feel free to use it for learning or as a base for your own project!

Contact

If you have questions, feedback, or want to discuss the project, you can reach me at:

• GitHub: @Dronquavious
• Email: tambweamani@gmail.com

Feel free to reach out — I’m happy to talk about the project or help you get started.