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The Algorithm BSTW is a data compression algorithm, named after its designers, Bentley, Sleator, Tarjan and Wei in 1986.^[1] BSTW is a dictionary-based algorithm that uses a move-to-front transform to keep recently seen dictionary entries at the front of the dictionary. Dictionary references are then encoded using any of a number of encoding methods, usually Elias delta coding or Elias gamma coding.

This algorithm was published in the following paper: "A Locally Adaptive Data Compression Scheme", Communications of the ACM, 1986, volume 29 number 4, pp. 320–330.

A related idea was published in Ryabko, B. Ya. "Data compression by means of a book stack", Problems of Information Transmission, 1980, v. 16: (4), pp. 265–269.

The original name of this code is "book stack". The history of discovery of the book stack (or move-to-front) code can be found here: Ryabko, B. Ya.; Horspool, R. Nigel; Cormack, Gordon V. 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 (1987), no. 9, 792–794.

• Algorithm BSTW

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