Author: Unknown
Subject: length of codes in LZW FOLLOW-UP
Date: Sunday, 11 Oct 2020, 21:48:44

     ``Because the LZW codes do not have the same prefix
     property (i.e., no code is a prefix of another)."

I am confused as to what this means. I thought the codes were the numbers that "index" the strings in the LZW table. 

For example in the sheet we went over in class, the code for 'a' is 1, for 'b' is 2, for 'c' is 3, for 'ab' is 4, etc... 

Therefore if we were to send over 1 when there are 5 prefixes in the table, we would send 1 as 001 with three bits instead of two bits as 01. This is because we must use the number of bits to accommodate sending ANY code.

If this is correct, how is the prefix property related here?