Huffman character encoding/decoding

huffman.py

letter = {
	'A': '00',
	'E': '11',
	'T': '010',
	'C': '0110',
	'L': '0111',
	'S': '1000',
	'R': '1011',
	'O': '10010',
	'I': '10011',
	'N': '101000',
	'F': '101001',
	'H': '101010',
	'D': '101011',
}


def encode(word):
	word = word.upper()
	code = [letter[ltr] for ltr in word]
	return ''.join(code)


def decode(code):
	idx = 0
	word = ''
	while idx < len(code):
		found = []
		l     = 2
		while not any(found):
			found = [key for key in letter if letter[key] == code[idx:idx+l]]
			l += 1

		word += found[0]
		idx = idx + l - 1


	return word

# example:
if __name__ == '__main__':
	print(decode('01101010100111100101011100111010001100101000101011000110110101001010100011'))