Java compressing Strings

Question

I need to create a method that receives a String and also returns a String.

Ex input: AAABBBBCC

Ex output: 3A4B2C

Well, this is quite embarrassing a

Answer 1

Java's not my main language, hardly ever use it, but I wanted to give it a shot :] Not even sure if your assignment requires a loop, but here's a regexp approach:

 public static String compress_string(String inp) {
      String compressed = "";
      Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("([\\w])\\1*");
      Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(inp);
      while(matcher.find()) {
         String group = matcher.group();
         if (group.length() > 1) compressed += group.length() + "";
         compressed += group.charAt(0);
      }
      return compressed;
   }