Compression algorithm

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I not really sure this is the right newsgroup so please excuse me if it is not.

I am trying to create a simple compression algorithm using the LZW system and I can find a lot of information on the general description of it, but how exactly does the dictionary that is used work. Is it just stored in an array or do you need to write it to a file so that it can be used the next time you need to decompress a file. I would think it would need to be stored in a file and then read into an array since if you compressed the file and then shut down the program, would you not lose everything in the dictionary and then not be able to decompress the file? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Z.K.
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