Find the longest common starting substring in a set of strings [closed]

Answer 1

Python 2.6 (r26:66714, Oct  4 2008, 02:48:43) 

>>> a = ['interspecies', 'interstelar', 'interstate']

>>> print a[0][:max(
        [i for i in range(min(map(len, a))) 
            if len(set(map(lambda e: e[i], a))) == 1]
        ) + 1]

inters

• i for i in range(min(map(len, a))), number of maximum lookups can't be greater than the length of the shortest string; in this example this would evaluate to [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

• len(set(map(lambda e: e[i], a))), 1) create an array of the i-thcharacter for each string in the list; 2) make a set out of it; 3) determine the size of the set

• [i for i in range(min(map(len, a))) if len(set(map(lambda e: e[i], a))) == 1], include just the characters, for which the size of the set is 1 (all characters at that position were the same ..); here it would evaluate to [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

• finally take the max, add one, and get the substring ...

Note: the above does not work for a = ['intersyate', 'intersxate', 'interstate', 'intersrate'], but this would:

 >>> index = len(
         filter(lambda l: l[0] == l[1], 
             [ x for x in enumerate(
                 [i for i in range(min(map(len, a))) 
                     if len(set(map(lambda e: e[i], a))) == 1]
         )]))
 >>> a[0][:index]
 inters