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.




import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class RunLengthEncoding {
 
    public static String encode(String source) {
        StringBuffer dest = new StringBuffer();
        for (int i = 0; i < source.length(); i++) {
            int runLength = 1;
            while (i+1 < source.length() && source.charAt(i) == source.charAt(i+1)) {
                runLength++;
                i++;
            }
            dest.append(runLength);
            dest.append(source.charAt(i));
        }
        return dest.toString();
    }
 
    public static String decode(String source) {
        StringBuffer dest = new StringBuffer();
        Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("[0-9]+|[a-zA-Z]");
        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(source);
        while (matcher.find()) {
            int number = Integer.parseInt(matcher.group());
            matcher.find();
            while (number-- != 0) {
                dest.append(matcher.group());
            }
        }
        return dest.toString();
    }
 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String example = "WWWWWWWWWWWWBWWWWWWWWWWWWBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWBWWWWWWWWWWWWWW";
        System.out.println(encode(example));
        System.out.println(decode("1W1B1W1B1W1B1W1B1W1B1W1B1W1B"));
    }
}