Simple/efficient text compression

Question

What's the simplest, but efficient compression algorithm?

Deflate, lzma, etc. aren't valid options. I need something that compiles really small, like: RLE, LZX, Huffman, etc..

Note: The data is 95% ASCII text
Edit: Data is ~20kb at the moment, but i expect it to grow up to 1mb

Answer 1

It sounds like LZO was designed to meet your requirements:

• Decompression is simple and very fast.
• Requires no memory for decompression.
• Compression is pretty fast.

Answer 2

you could try http://scz-compress.sourceforge.net/

Answer 3

Most dictionary schemes will do nicely. Any of the LZs. We use an LZ77 varient on embedded systems for a lot of our simple compression stuff and it works beautifully with almost no memory overhead. What kind of system is compressing and what is decompressing? That will determine the type of compressor you can get away with.

Answer 4

http://www.melvilletheatre.com/articles/cstuff/2.html

Answer 5

This benchmark has a lot of comparisons. Check it out as it shows you also the algorithms used in the compression process.