Though many compression methods are based on the use of variable length codes, there has recently been a trend to search for
alternatives in which the lengths of the codewords are more restricted, which can be useful for fast decoding and compressed
searches. This paper explores the construction of variable-to-fixed length codes, which have been suggested long ago by Tunstall.
Using a new heuristic based on suffix trees, the performance of Tunstall codes could be improved by more than 30%.