Better Compression

Problem Overview

• Reformat a mis-compressed string S where letters are followed by counts; return a properly compressed string with one entry per letter, totals aggregated, in alphabetical order.
• Input: S of length 1–100000 using 'a'–'z' with counts 1–1000; Output: corrected compressed string.
• Domain: text parsing and data normalization for simple string compression.
• Asked in Goldman interviews; a classic coding interview problem and interview question.