Problem 383226 · easy · Phase 03 Linear Management & Searching

Shared Opening of Every Title

strings · prefixes · iteration

A library wants to know how the titles in a series begin. Given a list of strings titles, return the longest string that is a prefix of every title. If the list is empty or the titles share no first character, return "".

Examples

Input:  titles = ["interstellar", "internet", "interval"]
Output: "inter"

Input:  titles = ["apple", "banana"]
Output: ""

Constraints

  • 0 <= len(titles) <= 5000, each title up to 200 characters
  • Target: O(total number of characters) time.

Goals

  • Compare strings column by column
  • Stop at the first column where any string differs or ends
  • Return an empty string for an empty list
Starting Python…