Create a compress function in Python?

Question

I need to create a function called compress that compresses a string by replacing any repeated letters with a letter and number. My function should return the shortened vers

Answer 1

I wanted to do it by partitioning the string. So aabbcc would become: ['aa', 'bb', 'cc']

This is how I did it:

def compression(string):

    # Creating a partitioned list
    alist = list(string)
    master = []
    n = len(alist)

    for i in range(n):
        if alist[i] == alist[i-1]:
            master[-1] += alist[i]
        else:
            master += alist[i]


    # Adding the partitions together in a new string
    newString = "" 
    for i in master:
        newString += i[0] + str(len(i))

    # If the newString is longer than the old string, return old string (you've not 
    # compressed it in length)
    if len(newString) > n:
        return string
    return newString



string = 'aabbcc'
print(compression(string))