CountSay.md

38. Count and Say

The count-and-say sequence is the sequence of integers with the first five terms as following:

1.     1
2.     11
3.     21
4.     1211
5.     111221

1 is read off as "one 1" or 11.

11 is read off as "two 1s" or 21.

21 is read off as "one 2, then one 1" or 1211.

Given an integer n, generate the nth term of the count-and-say sequence.

Note: Each term of the sequence of integers will be represented as a string.

Example 1:

Input: 1
Output: "1"

Example 2:

Input: 4
Output: "1211"

Java

public String countAndSay(int n) {
    String s = "1"; // initial string
    for (int i = 1; i < n; i++) { // i starts from 1
        s = countHelp(s);
    }
    return s;
}
private String countHelp(String s) {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    char c = s.charAt(0); // first character
    int count = 1;
    for (int i = 1; i < s.length(); i ++) {
        if (s.charAt(i) == c) {
            // same as the first character
            count++;
        } else {
            sb.append(count).append(c);
            // then update c and reset count
            c = s.charAt(i);
            count = 1;
        }
    }
    sb.append(count).append(c);
    return sb.toString();
}

Objective-C