[leetcode] 14. Longest Common Prefix @ python

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.

解法

按照字符串的长度排序, 找到最短的字符串, 对它进行遍历, 查看其它字符串是否包含前缀, 如果不包含则立即返回结果.

Time: O(m*n), m是最短字符串的长度, n是列表的长度
Space: O(1)

代码

class Solution:
    def longestCommonPrefix(self, strs):
        """
        :type strs: List[str]
        :rtype: str
        """      
        ans = ''
        # edge case
        if len(strs) == 0: return ans 
        
        # sort the strs by the length
        strs.sort(key = lambda x: len(x))
        word = strs[0]
        for i in range(len(word)):
            for str in strs:
                if str[i] != word[i]:
                    return ans
            ans += word[i]                    
                
        return ans