Abstract: The invention relates to decoding an algebraic block code used for the purpose of channel coding. One object of the invention is to indicate an efficient way, which is simplified by comparison with the prior art, for decoding algebraic block codes used for channel coding for digital data transmission. The invention proposes for this purpose a method, a receiving device and a computer program in such a way that a received word (r) is sampled at predeterminable interpolation points (&agr;0, . . . , &agr;n−1) in order to obtain symbols (r0, . . . , rn−1) contained in the received word (r), coefficients (Ri) for the purpose of forming a syndrome polynomial (R[1](X)) are obtained by applying a discrete Fourier transformation to the symbols (r0, . . . , rn−1) and an error position search is carried out on the basis of the syndrome polynomial (R[1](X)) with the defined introduction of erasures.