Editing Canonicalization (section)

{{Short description|Process for converting data into a "standard", "normal", or canonical form}}
{{Use American English|date=March 2021}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2021}}
{{Distinguish|Canonical link element|Canonization}}

In [[computer science]], '''canonicalization''' (sometimes '''standardization''' or '''[[Normalization (statistics)|normalization]]''') is a process for converting [[data]] that has more than one possible representation into a "standard", "normal", or [[canonical form]]. This can be done to compare different representations for equivalence, to count the number of distinct data structures, to improve the efficiency of various [[algorithm]]s by eliminating repeated calculations, or to make it possible to impose a meaningful [[sorting]] order.