From: Daniel DeLorme <dan-ml@...42.com>
Date: 2007-08-03T19:34:18+09:00
Subject: Re: Determining the common prefix for several strings

> El Aug 3, 2007, a las 2:31 AM, Todd Burch escribi�:
> 
>> I have several strings to analyze.  The strings are the names of a list
>> of things that were once ordered and now are not.  A typical array of
>> names might look like this:
>>
>> item001
>> item004
>> item002
>> item002b
>> item002C
>> item 5
>> item 10
>> itemize this
>>
>> I want to parse these names and determine that "item" is the common
>> prefix.

Haha! Regexp magic!

list = <<-EOS
item001
item004
item002
item002b
item002C
item 5
item 10
itemize this
EOS

/\A(.*).*(\n\1.*)*\Z/.match(list)[1]
=> "item"

:-D
Daniel