  This paper considers the problem of variable-length coding over a discrete
memoryless channel (DMC) with noiseless feedback. The paper provides a
stochastic control view of the problem whose solution is analyzed via a newly
proposed symmetrized divergence, termed extrinsic Jensen-Shannon (EJS)
divergence. It is shown that strictly positive lower bounds on EJS divergence
provide non-asymptotic upper bounds on the expected code length. The paper
presents strictly positive lower bounds on EJS divergence, and hence
non-asymptotic upper bounds on the expected code length, for the following two
coding schemes: variable-length posterior matching and MaxEJS coding scheme
which is based on a greedy maximization of the EJS divergence.
  As an asymptotic corollary of the main results, this paper also provides a
rate-reliability test. Variable-length coding schemes that satisfy the
condition(s) of the test for parameters $R$ and $E$, are guaranteed to achieve
rate $R$ and error exponent $E$. The results are specialized for posterior
matching and MaxEJS to obtain deterministic one-phase coding schemes achieving
capacity and optimal error exponent. For the special case of symmetric
binary-input channels, simpler deterministic schemes of optimal performance are
proposed and analyzed.
