System and method for partition and pattern-match decoding of variable length codes

An apparatus and method of decoding variable length codes is provided. According to some embodiments, a method includes receiving a bitstream of a codebook of variable length codes, partitioning the codebook based on leading zeros (0) or ones (1), removing a common prefix, from each codeword to obtain a set of shortened codewords, determining a set of bit-patterns from the shortened codewords, partitioning the shortened codewords based on the set of bit-patterns to obtain sub-sets of the shortened codewords, removing a common prefix from each shortened codeword in the sub-sets of shortened codewords to obtain residual codewords, and forming a codebook based on the residual codewords.