Growth order for character encoding

Consider the encoding procedure that you designed in exercise 2.68 . What is the order of growth in the number of steps needed to encode a symbol? Be sure to include the number of steps needed to search the symbol list at each node encountered. To answer this question in general is difficult. Consider the special case where the relative frequencies of the n symbols are as described in exercise 2.71 , and give the order of growth (as a function of n ) of the number of steps needed to encode the most frequent and least frequent symbols in the alphabet.

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