Remove Substrings

Given a string s and a set of n substrings. You are supposed to remove every instance of those n substrings from s so that s is of the minimum length and output this minimum length. 

Have you met this question in a real interview? 

Yes

Example

Given s = ccdaabcdbb, substrs = ["ab", "cd"]
Return 2

Explanation: 
ccdaabcdbb -> ccdacdbb -> cabb -> cb (length = 2)

java

public class Solution {
    /*
     * @param s: a string
     * @param dict: a set of n substrings
     * @return: the minimum length
     */
    public int minLength(String s, Set<String> dict) {
        // write your code here
        if (s == null || s.length() == 0 || dict == null || dict.size() == 0) {
            return -1;
        }
        Queue<String> queue = new LinkedList<>();
        Set<String> set = new HashSet<>();
        queue.offer(s);
        set.add(s);
        int min = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
        while (!queue.isEmpty()) {
            String str = queue.poll();
            min = Math.min(min, str.length());
            for (String sub : dict) {
                int index = str.indexOf(sub);
                while (index != -1) {
                    String newStr = str.substring(0, index) + str.substring(index + sub.length(), str.length());
                    if (!set.contains(newStr)) {
                        set.add(newStr);
                        queue.offer(newStr);
                    }
                    index = str.indexOf(sub, index + 1);
                }
            }
        }
        return min;
    }
}