14. Longest Common Prefix

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 lower-case English letters.

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Solution:

Might be a bit slow, but here’s my relatively elegant Python solution:

class Solution:
    # @return a string
    def longestCommonPrefix(self, strs):
        if not strs:
            return ""
            
        for i, letter_group in enumerate(zip(*strs)):
            if len(set(letter_group)) > 1:
                return strs[0][:i]
        else:
            return min(strs)