Codeword ($c\in C$)

A codeword is a member of the specified set of words used to encode messages. For a linear code specified by a parity-check matrix $H$, the codewords are precisely the vectors satisfying $Hc=0$. The minimum distance between distinct codewords controls error correction.

The codeword length is the number of alphabet symbols in a codeword. For a binary word it counts bits; in a prefix code, it is the depth of the corresponding leaf in the code tree.

// Target: algebra.bigb