Count zeroes between two non-zero number and then continue doing this through the array of numbers in R

Lets say we have this following data:

a <- c(0.1,0.2,0,0,0,0,1.2,1.4,0,0,1.4)
b <- c(0,0,0,1.1,0,0,0,0,0.25,0.51,0)

Now I would like to count the zeroes between two non-zero numbers and continue the count in consequent non-zero numbers. So, the output would look like
for a it would be an array of (4,2)
for b it would be an array of (3,4,1)

I tried counting zeroes with general filtering codes, but I can’t replicate the code for the consequent non-zero-zero numbers.

Here is the precipitation dataset I am dealing with:

I want to count the number of days between precipitation events. Maybe this will make the question clearer.

>Solution :

You can use run-length encoding (rle):

a <- c(0.1,0.2,0,0,0,0,1.2,1.4,0,0,1.4)
b <- c(0,0,0,1.1,0,0,0,0,0.25,0.51,0)

with(unclass(rle(a)), lengths[values == 0])
#> [1] 4 2
with(unclass(rle(b)), lengths[values == 0])
#> [1] 3 4 1

^{Created on 2022-10-26 with reprex v2.0.2}