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. Also, if you consider that the longest common prefix of multiple strings can be defined recursively as the longest common prefix of (the first string, the longest common prefix of the rest of the strings), it won't work if the longest common prefix of no strings is the empty string. --Spoon! (talk) 01:32, 21 March 2015 (UTC)