14. Longest Common Prefix

https://leetcode.com/problemset/

 

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: strs = ["flower","flow","flight"]
Output: "fl"

Example 2:

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

 

Constraints:

• 1 <= strs.length <= 200
• 0 <= strs[i].length <= 200
• strs[i] consists of only lowercase English letters if it is non-empty.

 

class Solution:
    def longestCommonPrefix(self, strs: List[str]) -> str:
        if len(strs) <= 0:
            return ""

        shortest = min(strs, key=len)

        for i, char in enumerate(shortest):
            for other in strs:
                if other[i] != char:
                    return shortest[:i]

        return shortest