Huffman Compression

Hi Devs, recently I submitted my Package Text_Huffman to PEAR. Since time is a critical factor dealing with algorithms, I started coding a huffman Extension. Please, are there any caveats, comments, wishes for the C-Extension, which currently have the following functions: string huffman_encode( string ) string huffman_decode( string ) bool huffman_encode_file( file in, file out) bool huffman_decode_file( file in, file out) For your information: Huffman compression belongs into a family of algorithms with a variable codeword length. That means that individual symbols (characters in a text file for instance) are replaced by bit sequences that have a distinct length. So symbols that occur a lot in a file are given a short sequence while other that are used seldom get a longer bit sequence. Huffman Compression is about 50 years old and is used in various formats such as GIF, Jpeg and Zip. All the best, Markus