Ziv-Lempel compression

Ziv-Lempel compression

[′ziv ′lem·pəl kəm′presh·ən] (computer science) A data compression technique in which data is represented by a sequence of numbers standing for the positions of character strings in a dictionary; this dictionary initially contains every character in the alphabet and is continually enlarged by forming new strings from the string just compressed and the upcoming character in the text.