Coding Problem Splitter

Overview

Most candidates cannot solve this interview problem:

🔸 Input: "aaaabbbcca"
🔸 Output: [("a", 4), ("b", 3), ("c", 2), ("a", 1)]

Write a function that converts the input to the output

I ask it in the screening interview and give it 25 minutes

How would you solve it?

— Alexey Grigorev (@Al_Grigor) February 3, 2021

Coding Challenge

Not a fan of coding challenges, but this one looked interesting. I gave myself 25 minutes to figure it out and it took me about 25 minutes to come up with a solution.

My first couple of attempts where trying to be too clever. I just came to the conclusion that I should be writing it out in a simple way with comments.

Final

The solution gist is not the cleanest but I don’t mind it. May not be the most swifty way of doing this but it’s straightforward to read. You can see where the logic goes and nothing is hidden.