Leetcode 443. String Compression

Problem

Given an array of characters chars, compress it using the following algorithm:

Begin with an empty string s. For each group of consecutive repeating characters in chars:

• If the group’s length is 1, append the character to s.
• Otherwise, append the character followed by the group’s length.

The compressed string s should not be returned separately, but instead, be stored in the input character array chars. Note that group lengths that are 10 or longer will be split into multiple characters in chars.

After you are done modifying the input array, return the new length of the array.

You must write an algorithm that uses only constant extra space.

Algorithm

Count each character and save the number, if the number bigger than one.

Code

class Solution:
    def compress(self, chars: List[str]) -> int:
        if not chars:
            return None
        
        ch, cnts, slen, index = chars[0], 1, len(chars), 0
        for i in range(1, slen):
            if chars[i] == ch:
                cnts += 1
            else:
                chars[index] = ch
                index += 1
                if cnts > 1:
                    for digit in str(cnts):
                        chars[index] = digit
                        index += 1
                ch = chars[i]
                cnts = 1
        
        chars[index] = ch
        index += 1
        if cnts > 1:
            for digit in str(cnts):
                chars[index] = digit
                index += 1
        
        return index