A TypeScript/Deno library that implements a trie data structure to find the shortest unique prefix for words in a given set.

The PrefixFinder class uses a trie to efficiently find the minimum prefix needed to uniquely identify a word among all words added to the structure. This is useful for auto-completion systems, command disambiguation, and other applications where you need the shortest unambiguous prefix.

import { PrefixFinder } from "./prefix_finder.ts";

const finder = new PrefixFinder();

// Add words to the trie
finder.addWord("hello");
finder.addWord("help");
finder.addWord("world");

// Get shortest unique prefixes
finder.prefixFor("hello"); // Returns "hel"
finder.prefixFor("help"); // Returns "hel" + "p" = "help"
finder.prefixFor("world"); // Returns "w"

Adds a word to the trie. Empty strings are ignored.

Returns the shortest prefix that uniquely identifies the given word among all words in the trie.

Throws:

• Error if the word is empty
• Error if the word was not previously added to the trie

This project uses Deno. To run tests:

deno test

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.