How is my python code going out of bound?

Question

I've been trying to encode a string (ex: aabbbacc) to something like a2b3a1c2 this is the code i've tried:

string_value = "aabbbacc"
temp_string = ""
for i in range(0, len(string_value)):
    if i != len(string_value) or i > len(string_value):
        temp_count = 1
        while string_value[i] == string_value[i+1]:
            temp_count += 1
            i += 1
        temp_string += string_value[i] + str(temp_count)
print(temp_string)

the problem is even though I've added an if condition to stop out of bounds from happening, I still get the error

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:run_length_encoding.py", line 6, in <module>
    while string_value[i] == string_value[i+1]:
IndexError: string index out of range

I've also tried

string_value = "aabbbacc"
temp_string = ""
for i in range(0, len(string_value)):
    count = 1
    while string_value[i] == string_value[i+1]:
        count += 1
        i += 1
        if i == len(string_value):
            break
    temp_string += string_value[i]+ str(count)
print(temp_string)

now, I know there might be a better way to solve this, but I'm trying to understand why I'm getting the out of bounds exception even though i have an if condition to prevent it, at what part of the logic am I going wrong please explain...

Answer 1

The problem is here:

for i in range(0, len(string_value)): # if i is the last index of the string
    count = 1
    while string_value[i] == string_value[i+1]: # i+1 is now out of bounds

The easiest way to avoid out-of-bounds is to not index the strings at all:

def encode(s):
    if s == '':   # handle empty string
        return s
    current = s[0]  # start with first character (won't fail since we checked for empty)
    count = 1
    temp = ''
    for c in s[1:]:  # iterate through remaining characters (string slicing won't fail)
        if current == c:
            count += 1
        else: # character changed, output count and reset current character and count
            temp += f'{current}{count}'
            current = c
            count = 1
    temp += f'{current}{count}'  # output last count accumulated
    return temp

print(encode('aabbbacc'))
print(encode(''))
print(encode('a'))
print(encode('abc'))
print(encode('abb'))

Output:

a2b3a1c2

a1
a1b1c1
a1b2