finding common prefix of array of strings

Question

I have an array like this:

$sports = array(
\'Softball - Counties\',
\'Softball - Eastern\',
\'Softball - North Harbour\',
\'Softball - South\',
\'Softball -         


        

Answer 1

For what it's worth, here's another alternative I came up with.

I used this for finding the common prefix for a list of products codes (ie. where there are multiple product SKUs that have a common series of characters at the start):

/**
 * Try to find a common prefix for a list of strings
 * 
 * @param array $strings
 * @return string
 */
function findCommonPrefix(array $strings)
{
    $prefix = '';
    $chars = array_map("str_split", $strings);
    $matches = call_user_func_array("array_intersect_assoc", $chars);
    if ($matches) {
        $i = 0;
        foreach ($matches as $key => $value) {
            if ($key != $i) {
                unset($matches[$key]);
            }
            $i++;
        }
        $prefix = join('', $matches);
    }

    return $prefix;
}