Polygonal approximation (PA) techniques have been widely applied in the field of pattern recognition, classification, shape analysis, identification, 3D reconstruction, medical imaging, digital cartography, and geographical information system. In this paper, we focus on some of the key techniques used in implementing the PA algorithms. The PA can be broadly divided into three main category, dominant point detection, threshold error method with minimum number of break points and break points approximation by error minimization. Of the above three methods, there has been always a tradeoff between the three classes and optimality, specifically the optimal algorithm works in a computation intensive way with a complexity ranges from O (N2) to O (N3).The heuristic methods approximate the curve in a speedy way, however they lack in the optimality but have linear time complexity. Here a comprehensive review on major PA techniques for digital planar curve approximation is presented.