OP solved it, closing

What should I do exactly with dots? I just don't get it

Thank you for trying to help me. I will give you an example for better understanding me. For input "H !e,Wdloollr", 4 the output is "Hello, World!". But my answer is Hdr Wll!,oleo.

It's hard to help in general without solving (part of) the problem for you. You'd better ask more concrete questions. I think it's clear enough from the description: if you see how encode works, then you understand what decode should do: just reverse the encoding process. Clear doesn't mean easy, but this is a 3kyu for a reason, meaning it is supposed to be part of the relatively hard katas.

Do not really understand what decode function should do. I thought that logic is almost the same as in encode function but it is not and I am stuck. Can someone help me?

sure, no problem.

Some other advices:

• you can keep working on the same kata until you sort everything out, even if it's retired (tho, a retired kata means you cannot republish it and so, you won't get many feedback unless another user keeps answering to your messages)
• as pointed before, the docs about authoring are a good sort for all this. And if you need clarification, codewars' discord #help-author channel is there as well.

cheers

Thank you for your advise. It is my first time creating kata and some things I do not understand how to do and do not understand where to read about it. I know that kata itself is not ideal. I found this task on the internet and it was interesting for me how can this task be solved in other ways. That is why I decided to try to post it but could not even imagine how difficult it is

and:

• no fixed tests with the tens digit being the same as the last one
• no test with one single number
• the behavior with an empty string isn't defined (and isn't tested either, if it should be)

• the example tests still aren't written properly (while the full test suite is, so I don't understand what you're doing...)
• the task is still as much artificial as it was (At least, it has less shenanigans with type conversions than the first one...)

Cheers

...? at that point, you could have republished the first one. What's the point of creating it a second time? (moreover with a title that will lead most users to seek for the first version that doesn't exist)

edit: mmmh, I see that's actually the third version... Maybe you should try something different, don't you think? The community obviously isn't fond of the kata idea itself.

Thank you for your feedback. I really appreciate it.
I guess, I fixed everything in my new kata. If you try and something goes wrong, give me a feedback!
Thank you!

Hi,

• the example tests contain the solution...
• the example tests aren't running at all (the test framework isn't used properly)
• sorry to say, but the task has close to no interest: it's totally artifical, and made of things that have been doen hundreds of times already

Did you already read the docs about authoring? Especially this page?
My advice would be to not republish this kata.

Cheers

* No random tests

* Describe block incorrectly named as "two_oldest_ages" (wrapper function also incorrectly named as test_second_oldest_first())

I see that you have attempted to remedy your tests, which unfortunately created more problems. Here's some resources for you to write better katas, Good luck!

Creating your first kata

Guidelines

Authoring Python Content

Now I got it, thank you very much!