Kraft's Inequality - Formal Statement

Formal Statement

Let each source symbol from the alphabet

be encoded into a uniquely decodable code over an alphabet of size with codeword lengths

Then

Conversely, for a given set of natural numbers satisfying the above inequality, there exists a uniquely decodable code over an alphabet of size with those codeword lengths.

A commonly occurring special case of a uniquely decodable code is a prefix code. Kraft's inequality therefore also holds for any prefix code.

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