Prefix Suffix Overlap Length
Find the longest literal suffix(left)/prefix(right) overlap in UTF-16 units, including zero and full overlap.
Description
Find the longest literal suffix(left)/prefix(right) overlap in UTF-16 units, including zero and full overlap.
A suffix/prefix overlap identifies how much text two sequences could share at a join. The longest exact overlap can help prepare concatenation without duplicate boundary text.
When to use this tool
Find the longest literal suffix(left)/prefix(right) overlap in UTF-16 units, including zero and full overlap.
- Prepare the supplied left, right fields for this operation.
- Compare the complete example with the representation used by your own input before carrying the result into another step.
How to use the tool and how it works
- Enter left, right. Use the exact text syntax, units and index conventions explained below.
- Run the tool. If input validation fails, correct the supplied fields before interpreting any result.
- Read result.overlapLength, result.overlap. Interpret false, null and empty lists using the distinctions below; they can be valid outputs.
Starting from the shorter input length, reduce the candidate size until left's suffix equals right's prefix. Return that length and the shared prefix text; use zero and empty text when none matches.1
| Input field | Meaning and representation | Accepted input |
|---|---|---|
| left | left. | Text; at most 8,192 UTF-16 code units, subject to the grammar above |
| right | right. | Text; at most 8,192 UTF-16 code units, subject to the grammar above |
| Output field | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| result | Object containing the named outputs below. |
| result.overlapLength | The overlap length value under the stated formula or text convention. |
| result.overlap | The overlap value under the stated formula or text convention. |
{
"input": {
"left": "ababa",
"right": "babc"
},
"output": {
"result": {
"overlapLength": 2,
"overlap": "ba"
}
}
}Limitations and assumptions
- The comparison uses UTF-16 units and exact spelling. It does not merge the texts, search internal overlaps or apply linguistic or Unicode normalization.
- Text offsets and lengths use UTF-16 code units unless explicitly described as bytes or code points. CRLF, CR and LF are recognized as line endings; a terminal newline creates a final empty line in the shared line model.
- Every declared top-level field is required and unexpected fields are rejected. Numeric inputs must be finite; ordinary text fields are bounded to 8,192 UTF-16 code units, with tighter operation-specific limits where stated.
- Ordinary string lists have at most 128 entries of at most 128 code units each; numeric lists and matrices have separate bounded size checks. Nonfinite results and excessively large serialized outputs are rejected.
- Indexes are zero-based and spans have an exclusive end unless explicitly stated otherwise. A valid false, null or empty-list result is distinct from malformed input.
Alternative or Complementary methods
Use a parser or language-aware editor when quoting, syntax or nested constructs matter. For plain text transforms, keep UTF-16 offsets, Unicode code points, grapheme clusters and UTF-8 byte offsets distinct; apply changes to the same source version used to calculate spans.
References
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