Problem: ¶

Implement functions to run length encode a string and decode the RLE value of an encoded string.

For example “aaaabcccaa” should be encoded to “4a1b3c2a”, while “3e4f2e” would be decoded to “eeeffffee”.

Solution: ¶

Encoding is straight forward:

 1run_length_encode :: [Char] -> [Char]
 2run_length_encode xs = run_length_encode' 0 '|' xs
 3    where
 4        run_length_encode' 0 _ [] = []
 5        run_length_encode' 0 _ (x:xs) = run_length_encode' 1 x xs
 6        run_length_encode' count curr_ch [] = (show count) ++ [curr_ch]
 7        run_length_encode' count curr_ch (x:xs)
 8            | curr_ch == x = run_length_encode' (count + 1) curr_ch xs
 9            | otherwise = (show count) ++ [curr_ch] ++ run_length_encode' 1 x xs
10

Decoding is also fairly straightforward, except we just need to accumulate the “count” before that many characters can be output:

run_length_decode :: [Char] -> [Char]
run_length_decode xs = run_length_decode' 0 xs
    where
        run_length_decode' _ [] = []
        run_length_decode' count (x:xs)
            | isDigit x = run_length_decode' ((count * 10) + (digitToInt x)) xs
            | otherwise = (replicate count x) ++ run_length_decode' 0 xs