Burrows-Wheeler compression with variable length integer codes

The final coder in Burrows-Wheeler compression is usually either an adaptive Huffman coder (for speed) or a complex of arithmetic coders for better compression. This article describes the use of conventional pre-defined variable length codes or universal codes and shows that they too can give excellent compression. The paper also describes a “sticky Move-to-Front” modification which gives a useful improvement in compression for most files.