[Python-ideas] Run length encoding

[Tim Peters]

In the other direction, e.g.,

    def expand_rle(rle):
        from itertools import repeat, chain
        return list(chain.from_iterable(repeat(x, n) for x, n in rle))

Then

>>> expand_rle([('a', 5), ('bc', 3)])
['a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'bc', 'bc', 'bc']

As to why zip is in the distribution, but not RLE, zip is a very
widely used, general purpose, compression standard.  RLE is a
special-purpose thing.