[leetcode] Longest Common Prefix

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

Solution:

We need a template to store the current longest prefix string. The template will be updated in the loop after matching with the new string in strs.

string longestCommonPrefix(vector<string> &strs) {
	string tmplt;
	if (strs.size() <= 0)
		return tmplt;
	else {
		tmplt = strs[0];
		int ind = 1;
		while(ind < strs.size() && tmplt != "" ) {
			int p = 0;
			while(tmplt[p] == strs[ind][p] && p < tmplt.size()) { p++; }
			tmplt.erase(p); //reserve previous p elements
			++ind;
		}
		return tmplt;
	}
}