What Is The Prefix And Suffix Of The String?

As a programmer you must have heard about prefixes and suffixes of a string but how much deeper do you try to dig these concepts?

If not yet, then we got you covered!

Whether you are new to computer science or appearing for any coding or programming interview or want to enlarge your knowledge, you should have a thorough understanding of this vital concept.

Prefix and suffix are defined as special substring cases. A prefix S of string occurs at the beginning whereas a suffix of string S occurs at the end of a particular string.

Here, you might have the question of what is string and how prefixes and suffixes form a major part of this concept?

Read on to know more about these concepts. Also, we tried to brush up your understanding on the concept of longest prefix suffix and Russian doll envelopes which forms a major part of string.

So let’s get started!

Understanding the concept of strings

Strings can be defined as one-dimensional character arrays or arrays which are char types in C++.

The reason behind using strings is that the character type of variable that is present in coding languages stores a single character. They are also stored in the memory and when we want to store multiple characters then we need a string.

A string can be written as

char nameofarray[size]

For example:

We have created a character array or string which is “char name[20]”. Now we want to store the name “Brand” into it, so we will take input as “cin>>name;” and then we give “Brand” as input and the array will be filled up to the fourth index but the fifth index will be filled up with a null character. The null character is used as a terminator in order to let us know at which point the string has ended.

Now you have a basic understanding of string, let’s move on to the concept of prefix and suffix of a string.

What is the prefix of a string?

The prefix of the string can be defined as the initial part of the string which involves starting characters of a string.

For example:

An Input is given as y=xaxaxaxa

In a longest prefix suffix question, you are asked to give the output of the longest prefix possible then the output will be xaxaxa.

What is the suffix of a string?

Do you know that the nonempty substring at the end of every string is called a suffix of that string?

A suffix of the string is one of the most powerful tools of data structure when you face string-related processings. Generally, the suffix on the string can be defined as the ending part of the string which involves the end characters of a string.

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