Re: mini-golf: first differing position

On Apr 21, 2004, at 1:57, <[email protected]> wrote:

> We want to find out the first position $n at which strings $x and $y
> differ.  If $x eq $y, then $n is undef.  If $x ne $y but $x is a
> prefix (aka initial segment) of $y, then $n should be equal to length
> $x.  The operation must preserve both $x and $y (i.e. destructive
> operations are disallowed).
>
> By way of baseline, here's an utterly uninspired solution:
>
> $n=0;while(($c=substr($x,$n,1)||undef $n) && $c eq 
> substr($y,$n++,1)){;}

A golfish solution:

     $n++while$x=~/./g&&$y=~/\G$&/g;

-- fxn