Implement run-length encoding and decoding.
Run-length encoding (RLE) is a simple form of data compression, where runs (consecutive data elements) are replaced by just one data value and count.
For example we can represent the original 53 characters with only 13.
"WWWWWWWWWWWWBWWWWWWWWWWWWBBBWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWB" -> "12WB12W3B24WB"
RLE allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data, which makes it a lossless data compression.
"AABCCCDEEEE" -> "2AB3CD4E" -> "AABCCCDEEEE"
For simplicity, you can assume that the unencoded string will only contain the letters A through Z (either lower or upper case) and whitespace. This way data to be encoded will never contain any numbers and numbers inside data to be decoded always represent the count for the following character.
For installation and learning resources, refer to the exercism help page.
For running the tests provided, you will need the Minitest gem. Open a terminal window and run the following command to install minitest:
gem install minitest
If you would like color output, you can require 'minitest/pride' in
the test file, or note the alternative instruction, below, for running
the test file.
Run the tests from the exercise directory using the following command:
ruby run_length_encoding_test.rb
To include color from the command line:
ruby -r minitest/pride run_length_encoding_test.rb
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-length_encoding
It's possible to submit an incomplete solution so you can see how others have completed the exercise.