How to compress a String in Java?

Question

I use GZIPOutputStream or ZIPOutputStream to compress a String (my string.length() is less than 20), but the compressed result is long

Answer 1

Compression algorithms almost always have some form of space overhead, which means that they are only effective when compressing data which is sufficiently large that the overhead is smaller than the amount of saved space.

Compressing a string which is only 20 characters long is not too easy, and it is not always possible. If you have repetition, Huffman Coding or simple run-length encoding might be able to compress, but probably not by very much.