LeetCode | Longest Common Prefix

14. Longest Common Prefix

Description

Write a function to find the longest common prefix string amongst an array of strings.

If there is no common prefix, return an empty string "".

Example 1:
Input: ["flower","flow","flight"]
Output: "fl"

Example 2:
Input: ["dog","racecar","car"]
Output: ""
Explanation: There is no common prefix among the input strings.

Note:

All given inputs are in lowercase letters a-z.

Solution: (Java)

class Solution {
    public String longestCommonPrefix(String[] strs) {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        if (strs.length == 0)
            return "";
        int min_len = strs[0].length();
        for (int i = 0; i < strs.length; i++) {
            if (strs[i].length() < min_len) {
                min_len = strs[i].length();
            }
        }

        for (int i = 0; i < min_len; i++) {
            char c = strs[0].charAt(i);
            int flag = 1;
            for (int j = 1; j < strs.length; j++) {
                if (c != strs[j].charAt(i)) {
                    flag = 0;
                    break;
                }
            }
            if (flag == 1)
                sb.append(c);
            else
                break;
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

思路

寻找字符串最长公共前缀，首先遍历一遍字符串数组，找出最小的字符串长度（最长公共前缀的长度不会超过这个），然后以此长度为循环范围，遍历每个字符串，只有每个字符串都包含相同的该字符，才把该字符加入公共前缀中。

更多思路可以参考：LeetCode | Solution