On optimal parsing for LZ78-like compressors

Furthermore we investigate how an optimal parsing, and hence an almost optimal parsing, affects the rate of convergence to the entropy of LZ78-like compressors. We discuss some experimental results considering the ratio between the speed of convergence to the entropy of compressors with and without an optimal parsing. This ratio presents a kind of wave effect that increases as the entropy of a memoryless source decreases but it seems always to slowly converge to one. According to the theory, this wave can be a tsunami for some families of highly compressible strings and, although the optimal (and the almost optimal) parsing does not improve the asymptotical speed of convergence to the entropy, it can improve compression ratio, and hence the decoding speed, in many practical cases.