How LZ78 Compression Algorithm Works

LZ78 is a lossless data-compression algorithm created by Lempel and Ziv in 1978. It takes advantage of a dictionary-based data structure to compress our data. In this case, it makes use of a trie data structure, as it’s more efficient for this compression technique. The motivation behind this approach was to get rid of the parameterization that was required to optimize LZ77's performance. The main motivation was to create a universal compression algorithm that does not require any knowledge on the input.