The Huffman Algorithm

Hey. In a project I am working on I need to use the Huffman algorithm (or any good and not-too-hard-to-implement compression algorithm for that matter) and I can't figure out quite well how to put it into code. I have read on both Wikipedia and the official Huffman website but I still can't figure out a way to do it. I have also read a separate article on binary heap but it wasn't of much help either.

Could anyone explain me a way to achieve this, without giving me any code (or not too much). I'm very stubborn and pig-headed and don't want to rely on other people's code because then I feel I have no credit for what I have done.

Thanks to all.

http://www.huffmancoding.com/david/algorithm.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding

http://cprogramming.com/tutorial/com...y/huffman.html

Thanks. I think I've found a way that could work. I'll keep you guys informed if I finish it. I should have it done by sunday (meh, work in-between).

Depending on what your compressing, Lempel-Ziv is a good
algorithm that's used in compressing large files whose symbol
alphabet isn't particularly easy to frequency analyse - i.e.
executables. Here's what Wikipedia has on the subject

I imagine that it'd be easier to implement than Huffman too.