Encode an integer

Husk, 35 31 30 29 26 25 24 22 20 19 15 bytes

-7 bytes thanks to @Zgarb!

Saved an extra 4 bytes, indirectly, thanks to Zgarb

ḋhΣhgφṁȯ`Jḋ2⁰ṗp

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Explaination

     φ             -- Define a recursive function which calls itself ⁰ and is applied to an Integer
      ṁ       p    -- map then concatenate over its prime factors
             ṗ     --   return their indices into the primes
            ⁰      --   and then recur, applying ⁰ to that number
       ȯ`Jḋ2       --   then surround it between the list [1,0] (binary 2)
    g              -- group adjacent equal elements
   h               -- drop last element (trailing 0s)
  Σ                -- concatenate
 h                 -- drop the last element
ḋ                  -- interpret as base 2

Jelly,  22 20  19 bytes

-1 thanks to Erik the Outgolfer (tail zeros from both sides, t, rather than from the right œr)

ÆfÆC$ÐLŒṘO%3ḟ2Ḋt0ṖḄ

A monadic link taking an integer greater than 2 and returning an integer greater than 0 (2 would return 0 as per the original spec too).

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How?

This almost exactly replicates the description given, just with some ordinal manipulation for the creation of the binary array...

ÆfÆC$ÐLŒṘO%3ḟ2Ḋt0ṖḄ - Link: number n (>=2)
     ÐL             - loop until no more changes occur:
    $               -   last two links as a monad:
Æf                  -     prime factorisation (includes duplicates & vectorises)
  ÆC                -     count primes less than or equal (vectorises)
                    -   ...note for entries of 2 this yields [1]
                    -      then for entries of 1 it yields [], as required
       ŒṘ           - get a Python representation - just like in the OP,
                    -    something like: "[[], [[[]], [[]]]]" (for an input of 46)
         O          - convert to ordinals e.g. [91,91,93,44,32,91,91,91,93,93,44,32,91,91,93,93,93,93]
          %3        - modulo by 3         e.g. [ 1, 1, 0, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 2, 2, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]
            ḟ2      - filter discard twos e.g. [ 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]
              Ḋ     - dequeue             e.g. [ 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]
               t0   - strip zeros         e.g. [ 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1]
                 Ṗ  - pop                 e.g. [ 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1]
                  Ḅ - binary to decimal   e.g. 185

Python 2, 212 177 bytes

lambda n:int(g(n).rstrip("0")[1:-1],2)
g=lambda n:"1%s0"%"".join(map(g,p(n)))
def p(n,i=0,j=1):
 while n>1:
  j+=1;P=q=1;exec"P*=q*q;q+=1;"*~-j;i+=P%q
  while n%j<1:yield i;n/=j

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The lack of prime builtins really hurts the byte count, and it times out on TIO with larger primes. Uses xnor's primality check.


Python 2 + gmpy2, 175 bytes

lambda n:int(g(n).rstrip("0")[1:-1],2)
g=lambda n:"1%s0"%"".join(map(g,p(n)))
def p(n,i=0,j=1):
 while n>1:
  j+=1;i+=is_prime(j)
  while n%j<1:yield i;n/=j
from gmpy2 import*

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This version does not time out on the larger test cases (i.e. 10000 - 10008).