Compress a string of alphabetic characters with the basic encoding where you simply count the number of repeated characters.

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Example One

Input: AAAAA

Output: 5A

Character “A” is repeated 5 times consecutively.

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Example Two

Input: ABaaaBCC

Output: AB3aB2C

Character “a” is repeated 3 times consecutively, character “C” is repeated 2 times consecutively.

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Notes

Input Parameters: One string parameter.

Output: Return the compressed string.

Constraints:

• Input string consists of alphabetic characters only

• 1

Solution

We provided one solution for this problem, it is optimal.

The problem asks to encode the input string in such a way so that its length remains the same or decreases. To do so, we counted repeated consecutive characters. If the count was more than one, we replaced the repeated portion by a number followed by the character.

Time complexity:

O(n) where n denotes the length of the input string.

Auxiliary space:

O(1) because no extra memory was used.

Space complexity:

O(n).