From: Stefan Rusterholz <apeiros@...>
Date: 2007-08-07T00:13:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Determining the common prefix for several strings

Todd Burch wrote:
> 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.
> 
> I know how to armstrong my way through it a character at a time, but I'm
> thinking that Ruby probably has a very elegant way of doing this that
> I'm not familiar with yet.
> 
> Thanks, Todd

Wow, I'm surprised nobody had the idea of simply using Array#abbrev, 
which is included in the stdlib.

Regards
Stefan
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