How to scan for elements in the array that have the longest shared prefix with the query term?

Question

i have an array in python that looks like this ['u1jr00', 'u1jr01', 'u1jr02', 'u1jr03', 'u1jr04', 'u1jr05', 'u1jr06','u1jrbjk']. i am trying to find the element in this array that closely matches with this string in the query u1jrbjvnrqz7. How can i scan through the whole array and find the elements with the most common prefix matchin with the query string ? are there any built-in functions in python for common prefix matching?

Are you looking for the element that has the longest shared prefix with the query term? — Joe Halliwell, Dec 20 '18 at 09:26
This is too localized. What does all of this code have to do with the question in the title? — timgeb, Dec 20 '18 at 09:27
@JoeHalliwell ...@timgeb yes that's exactly what i am looking for. how can i get that? — Rehan Aziz, Dec 20 '18 at 09:49
@JoeHalliwell..@timgeb could you please take back the downvotes on my question as this question has been answered properly and i have edited the question accordingly? i don't want to have my account blocked — Rehan Aziz, Feb 06 '19 at 11:09

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 20 '18 at 09:53

Here's a one-liner:

items = ["abc", "abcd", "abcde", "zasd"]
query = "abcd"
best_match = max((os.path.commonprefix([item, query]), item) for item in items)[1]

This treats all items with the same length of common prefix equally. If you want to prefer smaller ones:

best_match = max((os.path.commonprefix([item, query]), -len(item), item) for item in items)[2]

How to scan for elements in the array that have the longest shared prefix with the query term?

1 Answers1