src/main/java/com/fishercoder/solutions/_471.java

package com.fishercoder.solutions;

public class _471 {

    public static class Solution1 {
        /**
         * credit: https://discuss.leetcode.com/topic/71963/accepted-solution-in-java
         */
        public String encode(String s) {
            String[][] dp = new String[s.length()][s.length()];

            for (int l = 0; l < s.length(); l++) {
                for (int i = 0; i < s.length() - l; i++) {
                    int j = i + l;
                    String substr = s.substring(i, j + 1);
                    // Checking if string length < 5. In that case, we know that encoding will not help.
                    if (j - i < 4) {
                        dp[i][j] = substr;
                    } else {
                        dp[i][j] = substr;
                        // Loop for trying all results that we get after dividing the strings into 2 and combine the   results of 2 substrings
                        for (int k = i; k < j; k++) {
                            if ((dp[i][k] + dp[k + 1][j]).length() < dp[i][j].length()) {
                                dp[i][j] = dp[i][k] + dp[k + 1][j];
                            }
                        }

                        // Loop for checking if string can itself found some pattern in it which could be repeated.
                        for (int k = 0; k < substr.length(); k++) {
                            String repeatStr = substr.substring(0, k + 1);
                            if (repeatStr != null
                                    && substr.length() % repeatStr.length() == 0
                                    && substr.replaceAll(repeatStr, "").length() == 0) {
                                String ss = substr.length() / repeatStr.length() + "[" + dp[i][i + k] + "]";
                                if (ss.length() < dp[i][j].length()) {
                                    dp[i][j] = ss;
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
            return dp[0][s.length() - 1];
        }
    }

}