Talk:Longest common prefix

Please explain the maths equation for an audience of programmers rather than mathematicians, thanks. --Paddy3118 (talk) 15:00, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

No strings case

As I understand it, the example says that given 0 strings, it should return the empty string, i.e. lcp() = "". Is this necessary? I would argue the answer is undefined in this case, as any string is vacuously a "common prefix" of 0 strings, and therefore the "longest common prefix" is the longest string, which doesn't exist. --Spoon! (talk) 01:32, 21 March 2015 (UTC)