Count consecutive characters

Question

How would I count consecutive characters in Python to see the number of times each unique digit repeats before the next unique digit?

At first, I thought I could do

Answer 1

A solution "that way", with only basic statements:

word="100011010" #word = "1"
count=1
length=""
if len(word)>1:
    for i in range(1,len(word)):
       if word[i-1]==word[i]:
          count+=1
       else :
           length += word[i-1]+" repeats "+str(count)+", "
           count=1
    length += ("and "+word[i]+" repeats "+str(count))
else:
    i=0
    length += ("and "+word[i]+" repeats "+str(count))
print (length)

Output :

'1 repeats 1, 0 repeats 3, 1 repeats 2, 0 repeats 1, 1 repeats 1, and 0 repeats 1'
#'1 repeats 1'