What type of compression is Huffman coding classified as?

Huffman coding is classified as lossless compression because it allows for the exact reconstruction of the original data from the compressed data without any loss of information. This method is based on the frequency of occurrence of data items, where characters that appear more frequently are represented with shorter codes, while less frequent characters are given longer codes. This efficient representation reduces the overall size of the data while preserving its entirety.

In the context of digital data, lossless compression is crucial in areas where maintaining the integrity of the original information is essential, such as with text files or images that require exact reproduction. Other forms of compression, like lossy compression, may reduce file sizes further but at the cost of some quality or information, which does not apply to Huffman coding. Therefore, the classification as lossless is significant in understanding how Huffman coding operates in preserving data fidelity while achieving compression.