The disclosure relates to variable length encoding and decoding. A symbol is variable length encoded by selecting a variable length code word table from a set of variable length code word tables based on a value of a variable; selecting a code word from the selected variable length code word table on the basis of said symbol; and updating the value of said variable by comparing the correspondence between said symbol and said variable. If the comparison indicates that the value of the variable is smaller than the symbol, the value of said variable is incremented; else if the comparison indicates that the value of the variable is greater than the symbol, the value of said variable is decremented; else the value of the variable is not amended.