<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-length_encoding">Run-length encoding</a> is a string compression method that works by&nbsp;replacing consecutive identical characters (repeated 2 or more times) with the concatenation of the character and the number marking the count of the characters (length of the run). For example, to compress the string&nbsp;<code>&quot;aabccc&quot;</code>&nbsp;we replace <font face="monospace"><code>&quot;aa&quot;</code></font>&nbsp;by&nbsp;<font face="monospace"><code>&quot;a2&quot;</code></font>&nbsp;and replace <font face="monospace"><code>&quot;ccc&quot;</code></font>&nbsp;by&nbsp;<font face="monospace"><code>&quot;c3&quot;</code></font>. Thus the compressed string becomes <font face="monospace"><code>&quot;a2bc3&quot;</code>.</font></p>

<p>Notice that in this problem, we are not adding&nbsp;<code>&#39;1&#39;</code>&nbsp;after single characters.</p>

<p>Given a&nbsp;string <code>s</code>&nbsp;and an integer <code>k</code>. You need to delete <strong>at most</strong>&nbsp;<code>k</code> characters from&nbsp;<code>s</code>&nbsp;such that the run-length encoded version of <code>s</code>&nbsp;has minimum length.</p>

<p>Find the <em>minimum length of the run-length encoded&nbsp;version of </em><code>s</code><em> after deleting at most </em><code>k</code><em> characters</em>.</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong class="example">Example 1:</strong></p>

<pre>
<strong>Input:</strong> s = &quot;aaabcccd&quot;, k = 2
<strong>Output:</strong> 4
<b>Explanation: </b>Compressing s without deleting anything will give us &quot;a3bc3d&quot; of length 6. Deleting any of the characters &#39;a&#39; or &#39;c&#39; would at most decrease the length of the compressed string to 5, for instance delete 2 &#39;a&#39; then we will have s = &quot;abcccd&quot; which compressed is abc3d. Therefore, the optimal way is to delete &#39;b&#39; and &#39;d&#39;, then the compressed version of s will be &quot;a3c3&quot; of length 4.</pre>

<p><strong class="example">Example 2:</strong></p>

<pre>
<strong>Input:</strong> s = &quot;aabbaa&quot;, k = 2
<strong>Output:</strong> 2
<b>Explanation: </b>If we delete both &#39;b&#39; characters, the resulting compressed string would be &quot;a4&quot; of length 2.
</pre>

<p><strong class="example">Example 3:</strong></p>

<pre>
<strong>Input:</strong> s = &quot;aaaaaaaaaaa&quot;, k = 0
<strong>Output:</strong> 3
<strong>Explanation: </strong>Since k is zero, we cannot delete anything. The compressed string is &quot;a11&quot; of length 3.
</pre>

<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Constraints:</strong></p>

<ul>
	<li><code>1 &lt;= s.length &lt;= 100</code></li>
	<li><code>0 &lt;= k &lt;= s.length</code></li>
	<li><code>s</code> contains only lowercase English letters.</li>
</ul>

from functools import lru_cache

class Solution:
    def getLengthOfOptimalCompression(self, s: str, k: int) -> int:
        
        @lru_cache(None)
        def dfs(i, last_char, last_count, k):
            if k < 0:
                return float('inf')  # Exceeded deletion limit
            if i == len(s):
                return 0  # End of string

            # Option 1: Delete the current character
            delete = dfs(i + 1, last_char, last_count, k - 1)

            # Option 2: Keep the current character
            if s[i] == last_char:
                # Increment the count of the last character
                increment = 0
                if last_count == 1 or len(str(last_count + 1)) > len(str(last_count)):
                    increment = 1  # Length increases when count reaches 2, 10, 100
                keep = increment + dfs(i + 1, last_char, last_count + 1, k)
            else:
                # Start a new character run
                keep = 1 + dfs(i + 1, s[i], 1, k)  # +1 for the new character
                
            return min(delete, keep)
        return dfs(0, '', 0, k)
374100