The Most Efficient Algorithm to Find First Prefix-Match From a Sorted String Array?

Question

Input:

1) A huge sorted array of string SA;

2) A prefix string P;

Output:

The index of the first string matching the input prefix if any. If ther

Answer 1

This is just a modified bisection search:

• Only check as many characters in each element as are in the search string; and
• If you find a match, keep searching backwards (either linearly or by further bisection searches) until you find a non-matching result and then return the index of the last matching result.