Variable-Length Bit-Level Encoding

[Arafel via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Saturday, 12 November 2016 at 19:13:13 UTC, Nordlöw wrote:
> I'm looking for libraries/snippets (either in D or similar 
> languages) that perform variable-length encoding of unsigned 
> integers onto a bit-stream. Requirement is that smaller inputs 
> (integer values) should be encoded with equal or fewer bits.
>
> This
>
> 0 => [0]
> 1 => [1,0]
> 2 => [1,1,0]
>
> is easy but assumes a too extreme input value distribution.
>
> Does anybody have a suggestion for an encoder that is more 
> suitable for real-world values that are, for instance, normally 
> distributed?

If you have a sample of your data, perhaps Huffman codes 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding) might be an option?