Re^3: Find common prefix from a list of strings (trailing \)

[tye]

sub maxprefix {
  my $p = quotemeta shift;
  for (@_) { chop $p until /^$p/ }
  return $p;
}

This will still often fail on metacharacters because you'll get a "trailing \ in regexp" error.

sub maxprefix {
    my $p = shift(@_);
    for(@_) { chop $p  until /^\Q$p/ }
    return $p;
}

Update: The one you added has problems as well:

sub maxprefix {
  my $s = reverse shift;
  my $p = '';
  for (@_) { $p .= quotemeta chop $s while /^$p/ }
  chop $p;
  return $p;
}

It will find the maximum prefix between the first string and the string of the others that has the longest common prefix with the first string:

print maxprefix("testing","terse","tester","time"),$/;

prints test not t.