From: "Peña, Botp" <botp@...>
Date: 2007-08-08T11:20:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Determining the common prefix for several strings

From: Xavier Noria [mailto:fxn@hashref.com] 
#    %w{abc acb abd acd}.abbrev.sort_by {|s,| s.length}.first.first[0..-2]
#    => "ac"

duh, i should read further on what abrrev really does. Thanks for the enlightenment.

# PS: I think abbrev does too much work compared to more specific  
# solutions, but it is worth exploring for the sake of thinking nonetheless.

yes. this has been an enlightening thread nonetheless. 
kind regards -botp