You should at least make it symmetric... 
sub encode { $_ = shift; s/((\D)\2+)/length($1).$2/eg; $_ }
sub decode { $_ = shift; s/(\d+)(\D)/$2 x $1/eg; $_ }

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In reply to Re^2: Compressing a text file using count of continous characters by educated_foo
in thread Compressing a text file using count of continous characters by nirvana4ol

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