Glasgow | 26-JUL-SDC |Shreef Ibrahim | Sprint 2 |Improve precomputing

[shreefAhmedM]

Self checklist

• I have titled my PR with Region | Cohort | FirstName LastName | Sprint | Assignment Title
• My changes meet the requirements of the task
• I have tested my changes
• My changes follow the style guide

Task code

CYF-1183

Changelist

Replaced the nested loops that compared every pair of strings with a sorting-based approach.

Precomputed the sorted order of the input strings to reduce redundant comparisons.

Compared only adjacent strings, since the longest common prefix shared by any pair can be found among adjacent strings in sorted order.

Preserved the existing function interface and tests.

[cjyuan]

• Could you use complexity to explain how the new implementation is better than the original implementation?

• Why is the Changelist section empty?

[shreefAhmedM]

• Could you use complexity to explain how the new implementation is better than the original implementation?
• Why is the Changelist section empty?
  Thanks for pointing out that the original implementation had a time complexity of O(n²L), where L is the maximum string length, as it compared every pair of strings. This made the test with one million strings take a very long time. I've updated the implementation to sort the strings first and compare only adjacent pairs, reducing the time complexity.

[cjyuan]

What's the complexity of the improved implementation?

[shreefAhmedM]

What's the complexity of the improved implementation?

What's the complexity of the improved implementation?
The improved complexity is O(nL log n): sort, then compare adjacent strings. ti is faster than the original one. But if I managed to achieve O(nL), I think it would be better and faster

[cjyuan]

Analyses look good.

Note: An optimal complexity of $O(nL)$ for find_longest_common_prefix would probably require some data structure.