'LZ78 compression for data with both integers and words

hi i'm researching for lz78 compression and i had a question. what if the data consists of both numbers and word. the decompression would be very confusing. example: a compressed string like this: "11334a" would it be (113,3) and (4,a) or (1,1) (3,3) (4,a)

i'm wonder if using an "escape" like RLE would work. if not, is there anyway to compress mixed string like this or is lz78 for text only thank you for your time



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