Tetris-ing an array

Question

Consider the following array:

/www/htdocs/1/sites/lib/abcdedd
/www/htdocs/1/sites/conf/xyz
/www/htdocs/1/sites/conf/abc/         


        

Answer 1

I'll throw my hat in the ring …

function longestCommonPrefix($a, $b) {
    $i = 0;
    $end = min(strlen($a), strlen($b));
    while ($i < $end && $a[$i] == $b[$i]) $i++;
    return substr($a, 0, $i);
}

function longestCommonPrefixFromArray(array $strings) {
    $count = count($strings);
    if (!$count) return '';
    $prefix = reset($strings);
    for ($i = 1; $i < $count; $i++)
        $prefix = longestCommonPrefix($prefix, $strings[$i]);
    return $prefix;
}

function stripPrefix(&$string, $foo, $length) {
    $string = substr($string, $length);
}

Usage:

$paths = array(
    '/www/htdocs/1/sites/lib/abcdedd',
    '/www/htdocs/1/sites/conf/xyz',
    '/www/htdocs/1/sites/conf/abc/def',
    '/www/htdocs/1/sites/htdocs/xyz',
    '/www/htdocs/1/sites/lib2/abcdedd',
);

$longComPref = longestCommonPrefixFromArray($paths);
array_walk($paths, 'stripPrefix', strlen($longComPref));
print_r($paths);