Encode/compress sequence of repeating integers

Question

I have very long integer sequences that look like this (arbitrary length!):

0000000001110002220033333

Now I need some algorithm to convert

Answer 1

Here is a naive implementation of what you want.

$toEncode = '0000000001110002220033333';
$currentChar = '-1';
$length = strlen($toEncode);
$encoded = '';
$currentNbrChar = 0;
for($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++){
  if($toEncode[$i] != $currentChar){
    if($currentChar != '-1'){
      $encoded .= chr(97 + $currentChar).$currentNbrChar;
    }
    $currentNbrChar = 0;
    $currentChar = $toEncode[$i];
  }
  $currentNbrChar ++;
}
if($currentChar != '-1'){
  $encoded .= chr(97 + $currentChar).$currentNbrChar;
}
echo $encoded;