1. A method for compressing a byte stream of input data, comprising: establishing a multiple-byte buffer and sequentially transferring bytes from said byte stream into said buffer; establishing a multiple-byte first comparison window and sequentially transferring bytes from said byte stream into said first comparison window; establishing a multiple-byte second comparison window to receive some but not all of the bytes from said byte stream; comparing a byte in the buffer against the bytes in the first comparison window and the second comparison window; substituting a pointer for the compared byte in the buffer if the compared byte matches a byte in the first or second comparison window; and outputting said substituted pointer into an output stream.
1. A method for compressing a byte stream of input data, comprising: establishing a multiple-byte buffer and sequentially transferring bytes from said byte stream into said buffer; establishing a multiple-byte first comparison window and sequentially transferring bytes from said byte stream into said first comparison window; establishing a multiple-byte second comparison window to receive some but not all of the bytes from said byte stream; comparing a byte in the buffer against the bytes in the first comparison window and the second comparison window; substituting a pointer for the compared byte in the buffer if the compared byte matches a byte in the first or second comparison window; and outputting said substituted pointer into an output stream. 13. The method of claim 1, wherein the substituted pointer includes a symbol to indicate which of the comparison windows contains said match and a symbol to indicate a location of said match in said comparison window.