Compressed Bit Vectors Based on Variable-to-Fixed Encodings

Summary form only given. We consider practical implementations of compressed bit vectors, which support rank and select operations on a given bit-string, while storing the bit-string in compressed form. Our approach relies on variable-to-fixed (V2F) encodings of the bit-string, an approach that has not yet been considered systematically for practical encodings of bit-vectors. This approach leads to fast practical implementations with low redundancy (i.e., the space used by the bit vector in addition to the compressed representation of the bit-string),and is a flexible and promising solution to the problem of supporting rank and select on moderately compressible bit-strings, such as those frequently found in real-world applications.