Questions tagged [compression]
Related to compressing or decompressing arbitrary data. Challenges which relate to compressing a single specific input should instead be tagged [kolmogorov-complexity]
83
questions
306
votes
23answers
41k views
Write Moby Dick, approximately
Here is a 1.2Mb ASCII text file containing the text of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Your task is to write a program or function (or class, etc. -- see below) which will be given this ...
244
votes
36answers
46k views
Paint Starry Night, objectively, in 1kB of code
Note: Anders Kaseorg has been awarded the accept for now, to draw attention to his great answer, but the challenge is by no means over! I will award a 1000 point bounty to anyone who takes the top ...
59
votes
10answers
7k views
Encode Images into Tweets (Extreme Image Compression Edition) [closed]
Based on the very successful Twitter image encoding challenge at Stack Overflow.
If an image is worth 1000 words, how much of an image can you fit in 114.97 bytes?
I challenge you to come up with a ...
41
votes
17answers
8k views
Smallest chess board compression
Write an algorithm or program that can encode and decode a chess board. The goal is to make the smallest representation of a chessboard that could be used (once decoded) to determine all movement ...
40
votes
9answers
6k views
Text compression and decompression — “Nevermore.”
With the recent discussion about the use of compression tools in code golf, I thought it would be a nice challenge to write your own text compressor and decompressor.
Challenge:
Write two programs: ...
38
votes
2answers
2k views
Musical Tweet Challenge
This is the audio version of the Twitter image encoding challenge.
Design an audio compression format that can represent at least one minute of music in 140 bytes or less of printable UTF-8-encoded ...
37
votes
11answers
1k views
lc's dvntrs n Wndrlnd
The task
Today's special offer: consonants and punctuation for FREE!
Your program or function will be given as input the first 6 paragraphs of Lewis Carroll's famous novel Alice's Adventures in ...
36
votes
19answers
3k views
Bracket Expansion!
Your challenge is to expand some brackets in a program's input as shown:
Find a string s between two matching brackets [ and ], ...
35
votes
10answers
2k views
Help me recognise my monster
Background
The computer game NetHack dates from 1987, before the use of graphics in computer games was widely established. There are lots of monsters in the game, and potentially a lot need to fit on ...
34
votes
14answers
6k views
Sudoku Compression
Your job is to write a program (or two separate programs) in any language that:
Can take a completed Sudoku board as input (in any logical format) and compress it into a string of characters
Can take ...
33
votes
29answers
3k views
Is it a prefix code?
In information theory, a "prefix code" is a dictionary where none of the keys are a prefix of another. In other words, this means that none of the strings starts with any of the other.
For example, <...
31
votes
20answers
3k views
Golf a golf chart
Given a distance in meters as an integer \$60\le d \le 260\$, return the number of clubs that may be used according to the following arbitrary chart, where both \$min\$ and \$max\$ are inclusive:
<...
31
votes
8answers
2k views
Latin square compression
A Latin square is a square that has no repeated symbols in the rows or columns:.
13420
21304
32041
04213
40132
And as many Sudoku players know, you don't need ...
30
votes
11answers
2k views
Which wire to cut
This task is about compressing and processing a sequence of conditionals.
In the game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, a bomb defuser must disarm a bomb with the help of instructions relayed by ...
29
votes
2answers
2k views
Compress an image to a 4 KiB preview
In this challenge you will be creating an image preview compression algorithm. It's goal is to
reduce an arbitrary image file to a 4 KiB preview image, that can be used to quickly identify images
with ...
28
votes
15answers
7k views
.-…--..---.-…--… the red-nosed reindeer
Can you recover a sequence of letters from a sequence of dots and dashes? In Morse code, x is represented by -..-, but without ...
27
votes
8answers
2k views
Somewhere On The Tube …But On Which Lines?
The London Underground A.K.A. The Tube is the oldest underground railway in the world, it currently consists of eleven lines* servicing 267 named stations (strictly 269** stations since "Edgware ...
26
votes
21answers
3k views
Converting “0xUsernames”
0xUsernames
There's so many people using a messaging service that they're running out of space to store all the usernames! To fix this, they are going to start storing usernames as hexadecimal, where ...
25
votes
6answers
3k views
Big big numbers
Whilst trying to golf several of my answers, I've needed to write large integers in as few characters as possible.
Now I know the best way to do that: I'll be getting you to be writing this program.
...
25
votes
1answer
771 views
Maximal discrepancy-2 sequence with minimal entropy
Background
As noted in the PPCG challenge Compress a maximal discrepancy-2 sequence – which inspired this challenge – the authors of the paper Computer-Aided Proof of Erdős Discrepancy Properties ...
24
votes
12answers
2k views
22
votes
10answers
2k views
Compressing the Atomic Ionization Energies
This is a different type of compression challenge. In a normal kolmogorov-complexity challenge, you are required to recreate a list exactly. Here, you are allowed to round the values in any way you ...
22
votes
3answers
810 views
Golfing Strings
I have always failed to give an answer for kolmogorov-complexity challenges which require string compression, the main reason being that I don't know to use string compression tools as effectively as ...
22
votes
2answers
2k views
Lossy ASCII art compression
Background
PICASCII is a neat tool that converts images into ASCII art.
It achieves different degrees of brightness by using the following ten ASCII characters:
...
20
votes
1answer
473 views
Diff compression [closed]
For this challenge, you need to compress a diff. A diff is some data that represents the difference between two strings. For this challenge, you need to provide one or more programs that can:
Input ...
19
votes
19answers
2k views
Run-Length Encoding [duplicate]
Write a program uses run-length encoding to shorten a list of non-negative integers it has to read in.
You can assume the non-negative integers can fit in 32bit signed integers.
Input Format
The ...
19
votes
14answers
2k views
Let's decompress a bit
Given a compressed string \$s\$ made of printable ASCII characters (32 to 126), your task is to print or return the original text by applying this simple decompression algorithm:
Start with \$k=0\$
...
19
votes
12answers
4k views
All your base 97 are belong to us
Many programming languages are written using solely printable ASCII, tabs and newlines. These 97 characters are then stored in 8-bit bytes (which are actually capable of holding 256 different ...
19
votes
7answers
777 views
Move to the printable ASCII front
Background
The move-to-front transform (MTF) is a data encoding algorithm designed to improve the performance of entropy encoding techniques.
In the bzip2 compression algorithm, it is applied after ...
19
votes
5answers
840 views
Boggle Board Compression
When working on Non-Palindromic Polyglot Boggle, I found it quite tedious to pack the codes as efficiently as possible onto the Boggle board, even with only two strings. But we're programmers, right? ...
17
votes
32answers
1k views
Compactify the input
Given a word, your task is to compact it by saving its first character and removing any other vowel (aeiou).
Input
Your input can be the word in STDIN, a function argument or any other input format ...
17
votes
3answers
674 views
Burrows, Wheeler and Back
Background
The Burrows–Wheeler transform (BWT) is a reversible permutation of the characters of a string that results in large runs of similar characters for certain types of strings such as plain ...
17
votes
2answers
1k views
Monopoly Compression
Given a string representing the current state of a game of Monopoly at the beginning of a player's turn, compress all the necessary data into the smallest output. Answers will be judged by output size ...
17
votes
2answers
830 views
Thwart Lepton compression
Dropbox recently released Lepton (GitHub), a method that losslessly compresses JPEG images round-trip, saving an average of 22%.
Because of the pigeonhole principle, any general compression algorithm ...
15
votes
7answers
897 views
Send a cosmic call
The cosmic call is a message sent into space in 1999 and 2003.
It's made of 23 127*127px monochrome bitmap images, as detailed here.
Your mission is to write a program that displays the entire 127*...
15
votes
4answers
830 views
Palindrome Compression
Challenge
Write a program that compresses and decompresses ASCII text losslessly. It should be specialized to work well with palindromes, including case-insensitive and punctuation-insensitive ...
15
votes
2answers
823 views
Create the least compressible picture
"A picture is worth a thousand words"—so the old saying goes. The average word is about four characters long, so a picture conveys 4kB of information. But how much entropy, rather than information, ...
14
votes
4answers
600 views
Implement bzip2's run-length encoding
Background
After applying the BWT (as seen in Burrows, Wheeler and Back) and the MTF (as seen in Move to the printable ASCII front), the bzip2 compressor applies a rather unique form of run-length ...
12
votes
13answers
1k views
The weird and wild bean game
Maybe some of you already know this game: you have a collection of jelly beans of different colors. For every color, the bean can have different tastes, some are good and some are bad, and you cannot ...
12
votes
9answers
2k views
Naïve compression
using Prefixed Length Code
We are going to implement a compression of text (string, array/list of characters/bytes) by simple substitution of each character by a binary code, based on the frequency of ...
12
votes
4answers
592 views
Strategies for representing a given large integer using arithmetic expression
I have a specific number in mind, but it's part of a challenge I'm doing, and I don't want people to do (all) the work for me.
Here is a number which has the same digits, but shuffled:
...
12
votes
1answer
755 views
Lossless English language text compression challenge [closed]
Challenge:
Your challenge (should you choose to accept it) is to compress and decompress the 5MB "Complete Works of William Shakespeare" as found here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/100/pg100....
11
votes
11answers
1k views
Output code-sized Lorem Ipsum
Output the same length of Lorem ipsum your code is!
Rules:
Code can't be identical to output
No compression libraries
Shortest program in two weeks wins
No network usage, file reading and other ...
11
votes
7answers
1k views
Thwart LZMA2 compression
Goal
Create a program or pair of programs that collectively disrupt and fix files with the intent of preventing LZMA2 from working effectively. The disrupt and fix routines must be reciprocal, so ...
11
votes
10answers
2k views
Cheat activated
Background
The game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas went down in history also thanks to its wide selection of cheats. They're almost 90 and anyone who has ever touched this game, no doubt has tried ...
11
votes
1answer
686 views
Write a compressing util for gzip files
The task of this challenge is as following:
Write a program that reads a file of reasonable size (let's say <16 MB) from stdin or anywhere else (however you like, but must not be hardcoded), and ...
11
votes
6answers
7k views
Compressing RLE data to draw ASCII art
This question is based on what I came up with to answer another question.
Sometimes the questions here ask to draw some ASCII art. One simple way to store the data for the art is RLE (run-length ...
11
votes
5answers
644 views
Implement a URL shortener
URLs are getting too long. So, you must implement an algorithm to shorten a URL.
i. The Structure of a URL
A URL has 2 main parts: a domain and a path. A domain is the part of the URL before the ...
10
votes
12answers
2k views
Simple State Sales Tax Calculator
Sales taxes in the United States are complicated, to say the least. Generally, there's a state sales tax (there are a handful of states that do not collect a state sales tax), but there could also be ...
10
votes
5answers
920 views
Breaking Bad - ize any string (compression) [duplicate]
The TV series "Breaking Bad" replaced the letters Br and Ba with a periodic-table like representation, printing [Br35]eaking [Ba56]d.
Create a program ...
