Run-length encoding

You are encouraged to solve this task according to the task description, using any language you may know.


Task

Given a string containing uppercase characters (A-Z), compress repeated 'runs' of the same character by storing the length of that run, and provide a function to reverse the compression.

The output can be anything, as long as you can recreate the input with it.



Example

 Input: WWWWWWWWWWWWBWWWWWWWWWWWWBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWBWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
 Output: 12W1B12W3B24W1B14W


Note: the encoding step in the above example is the same as a step of the Look-and-say sequence.




(define (run-length-decode v)
   (apply string-append (map (lambda (p) (make-string (car p) (cdr p))) v)))
 
(define (run-length-encode s)
(let ((n (string-length s)))
(let loop ((i (- n 2)) (c (string-ref s (- n 1))) (k 1) (v '()))
(if (negative? i) (cons (cons k c) v)
    (let ((x (string-ref s i)))
    (if (char=? c x) (loop (- i 1) c (+ k 1) v)
                     (loop (- i 1) x 1 (cons (cons k c) v))))))))
 
(run-length-encode "WWWWWWWWWWWWBWWWWWWWWWWWWBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWBWWWWWWWWWWWWWW")
; ((12 . #\W) (1 . #\B) (12 . #\W) (3 . #\B) (24 . #\W) (1 . #\B) (14 . #\W))
(run-length-decode '((12 . #\W) (1 . #\B) (12 . #\W) (3 . #\B) (24 . #\W) (1 . #\B) (14 . #\W)))
; "WWWWWWWWWWWWBWWWWWWWWWWWWBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWBWWWWWWWWWWWWWW"