sends the compressed character code corresponding to the length of the run of the characters minus three in step 140 at the receiving modem 13 the decompressor processes the string of characters in exactly the reverse order the decompressor checks for strings of three repeated characters in step 142 and when such a string is found the decompressor then utilizes the next compressed character code fetched in step 144 for its actual numeric value and instead of outputting that character it outputs the previous character the number of times represented by the numeric value of the data part in step 148 the efficiency of such a system is directly proportional to the length of the run of characters in other words if the run characters is three characters long the system loses efficiency because the system has to send the zero character token after the initial three characters in a run go through if the run is four characters long the system breaks even since there are still only four characters the true savings results when the run of repeated characters is longer than four characters in most data packages there are more three character runs than longer runs but the advantage gained by the longer runs far outweighs the loss from.