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Encode and Decode Strings

Certification: Intermediate Level Accuracy: 0% Submissions: 0 Points: 10

Write a C# program to design an algorithm to encode a list of strings to a single string, and decode the single string back to the original list of strings. The encoding and decoding schemes should be stateless and must support all possible strings.

Example 1
    
  
  • Input: ["Hello", "World"]
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  • Output: After encoding and then decoding, the result should be ["Hello", "World"]
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  • Explanation:
    
      
      
    • The encoded string could be something like "5#Hello5#World" where "5#" represents the length of the string followed by a delimiter.
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Example 2
    
  
  • Input: ["", "Learning", "is#fun"]
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  • Output: After encoding and then decoding, the result should be ["", "Learning", "is#fun"]
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  • Explanation:
    
      
      
    • The encoded string could be something like "0#8#Learning6#is#fun". Note how it handles empty strings and strings with delimiters.
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Constraints
    
  
  • The number of strings in the list is between 0 and 10^4
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  • The length of each string is between 0 and 200
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  • The strings may contain any possible characters, including special characters
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  • Time Complexity: O(n) where n is the total length of all strings
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  • Space Complexity: O(n) for both encoding and decoding
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Hint
Solution

Solution Hints

    
  
  • Use a length-based encoding scheme.
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  • For each string, prepend its length followed by a delimiter before the actual string.
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  • During decoding, read the length first, then the delimiter, and finally the string content.
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  • Be careful with strings that might contain your delimiter character.
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  • Make sure your encoding is unambiguous and can be correctly decoded.
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Steps to solve by this approach:

 Step 1: For encoding, iterate through each string in the input list.
 Step 2: For each string, append its length, followed by a delimiter (such as '#'), followed by the actual string.
 Step 3: Combine all encoded strings into a single string.
 Step 4: For decoding, iterate through the encoded string.
 Step 5: Parse the length until we encounter the delimiter, then read that many characters to get the original string.
 Step 6: Repeat the process until we've decoded all strings.
 Step 7: Return the list of decoded strings.

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