Compressor (Huffman) — Build & Usage

This repository contains a simple Huffman compressor program.

Build

The project is written in C++17. Example compile commands are shown below.

On Windows (MSYS2/MinGW or WSL) using g++:

g++ -std=c++17 -O2 -Icompressor -Ilib src/main.cpp compressor/huffman.cpp -o compressor.exe

On Unix-like systems (Linux, macOS):

g++ -std=c++17 -O2 -Icompressor -Ilib src/main.cpp compressor/huffman.cpp -o compressor

Notes:

• Adjust include paths (-I...) if your directory layout differs.
• If you want to build with separate object files or a Makefile, create a simple Makefile that compiles src/main.cpp and compressor/huffman.cpp.

Run

Usage (Windows):

./compressor.exe {input_path} {output_path} {operation}

Usage (Unix):

./compressor {input_path} {output_path} {operation}

Parameters:

• {input_path}: path to the input file to encode or decode.
• {output_path}: path where the output will be written.
• {operation}: one of the valid operations below.

Valid operations:

• -e : encode the input file to compressed format.
• -d : decode a compressed file back to original.

Examples:

Encode a file:

./compressor.exe test/test.txt test/test_compressed.huf -e

Decode a file:

./compressor.exe test/test_compressed.huf test/test_decoded.txt -d

Troubleshooting

• If you see missing header errors, make sure the -Icompressor and -Ilib include paths point to the directories that contain header files used by the sources (for example compressor/huffman.h and lib/minHeap.h).
• If you want a silent build: add -s to strip symbols.
• For large files, ensure you have enough memory and disk space.