LZW encoder/decoder

CLI tool for encoding and decoding text files, using an LZW algorithm.

The CLI have three modes encode, decode, and check.

• encode takes a text file as input, encodes it and puts it in an output file with .ENC extension.
• decode takes the encoded file (.ENC) and decodes it to an output file.
• check takes two input files, and checks that they have the same number of characters and content.

For encode and decode, the output file will be automatically named but can be manually specified as an optional input. The only requirement is that that for encode, it has to have an extension .ENC.

Example:

> lzw encode path\to\inFile.txt optional\path\to\outFile.ENC

For information about the LZW algorithm, see for example:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lempel%E2%80%93Ziv%E2%80%93Welch
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2HSd3HCpDs

Installation

To run the make file, install the Visual Studio C++ command-line toolset. See e.g.: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/building-on-the-command-line?view=vs-2019

You can use make on Windows, by installing it through a package manager, such as Chocolatey: https://chocolatey.org/

The make commands are restricted to Windows. For other platforms, the souce code would have to be compiled manually.