R/splitByCommonTails.R

In R.utils: Various Programming Utilities

splitByCommonTails <- function(strs, ...) {
  names <- names(strs)

  prefix <- getCommonPrefix(strs)
  suffix <- getCommonPrefix(strs, suffix=TRUE)

  # Cut out the prefix
  body <- substring(strs, nchar(prefix)+1)

  # Cut out the suffix
  body <- substring(body, 1, nchar(body)-nchar(suffix))

  # Special case
  if (all(body == "")) {
    suffix <- ""
  }

  strs <- lapply(body, FUN=function(s) {
    c(prefix, s, suffix)
  })

  strs <- unlist(strs, use.names=FALSE)
  strs <- matrix(strs, ncol=3, byrow=TRUE)
  colnames(strs) <- c("prefix", "body", "suffix")
  rownames(strs) <- names

  strs
} # splitByCommonTails()