A New Proof of the T-C Algorithm

Abstract

An algorithm for constructing an alphabetic binary tree of minimum weighted path length was suggested by Hu and Tucker. The algorithm called the T-C algorithm needs $O( {n\log n} )$ operations and $O( n )$ storage locations, where n is the number of terminal nodes in the tree. Although the algorithm is simple to state, the associated proof was extremely complicated and long. Here a more revealing and comparatively shorter proof is given.