Perl - longest common prefix of 2 or more strings? -

how can create perl subroutine take in array , find longest common prefix 2 or more of elements? (strings)

i have code:

sub longest_common_prefix {     $prefix = shift;     (@_) {         chop $prefix while (! /^\q$prefix\e/);         }     return $prefix; } 

but works if looking longest common prefix of all strings.

for example, if pass array following strings:

aaabgfb aaajjjj jjfkbbb aaahghg 

i want return aaa answer.

thanks!

one way store information in hash. in example, set hash key length of each prefix, , value being actual prefix found.

note method overwrites key , value if same-length prefix exists, you'll last prefix found of longest length (sort() takes care of finding longest one).

the regex says "find first character in string , capture it, , use char found in second capture, , capture many there are". string join()ed scalar , put hash.

use warnings; use strict;  %prefixes;  while (<data>){     $prefix = join '', /^(.)(\1+)/;     $prefixes{length $prefix} = $prefix;  }  $longest = (sort {$b <=> $a} keys %prefixes)[0]; print "$prefixes{$longest}\n";  __data__ aabgfb aaajjjj jjfkbbb aaahghg 

output:

aaa