Recursive Encoding : Recursive Compression : Infinite Compression

[Ernst]

Has any example of recursive compression ever been demonstrated?


So, I thought to ask here if anyone has actually done such.


This topic has been the domain of claims and no proof as far as I know.


I have a scheme to try in the near future myself.

[Ian Clifton]

Ernst <Ernst...@sbcglobal.net> writes:

> Has any example of recursive compression ever been demonstrated?
>

Yes, that’s easy:

dd if=/dev/zero count=1000 | gzip --verbose --stdout | \
gzip --verbose --stdout > /dev/null
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
512000 bytes (512 kB) copied, 0.00438917 s, 117 MB/s
99.9%
93.4%

But you should be asking whether *useful* recursive compression has ever
been demonstrated.

>
> So, I thought to ask here if anyone has actually done such.
>
>
> This topic has been the domain of claims and no proof as far as I know.
>

Many, many claims, but also plenty of proof that it couldn’t work in any
real useful sense.

>
> I have a scheme to try in the near future myself.
>

Well, recursive, infinite (i.e. down to zero bytes) compression has
already been “done”, in Matt Mahoney’s BARF program:

http://mattmahoney.net/dc/#barf

—it might be a better use of your time to download it, play around with
it, examine how it works, and ask yourself, “But is this really useful?
If I were to try and make a better data compressor, what questions would
I really want to ask?”

--
Ian ◎

[Ernst]

Thanks Ian

I was thinking no one had done so and lived to decompress it. I haven't kept up on the latest claims.

I've never looked at BARF maybe I should. Yeah, this is a topic on the fringe for sure.