LeetCode | 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.

1. Bool + For | 入门玩家

一直在跟着testcase改代码（testcase-oriented低级玩家在此），用boolean isDif来确认连续的单词是否有差异，同时要确保选用长度最短的作common prefix，而不是最后出现的（可能不是最短）。

class Solution {
public:
    string longestCommonPrefix(vector<string>& strs) {
        if (strs.size() == 0) {
            return "";
        }
        string common = strs[0];
        bool isDif = false;
        
        for (int i = 0; i < strs.size(); i++) {
            if (strs[i] == "") {
                return "";
            }
            for (int j = 0; j < common.length(); j++) {
                if (j < strs[i].length()) {
                    if (common[j] != strs[i][j]) {
                        //jth elements differ && j is within range
                        common = common.substr(0,j);
                        isDif = true;
                    }
                }
            }
            
            if (!isDif && strs[i].length() < common.length()) {
                //situation when ["aa","a"] should return "a"
                common = strs[i];
            }
        }
        return common;
    }
};