phpMan > perldoc > String::Similarity

NAME
    String::Similarity - calculate the similarity of two strings

SYNOPSIS
     use String::Similarity;

     $similarity = similarity $string1, $string2;
     $similarity = similarity $string1, $string2, $limit;

DESCRIPTION
    $factor = similarity $string1, $string2, [$limit]
        The "similarity"-function calculates the similarity index of its two arguments. A value of 0
        means that the strings are entirely different. A value of 1 means that the strings are
        identical. Everything else lies between 0 and 1 and describes the amount of similarity
        between the strings.

        It roughly works by looking at the smallest number of edits to change one string into the
        other.

        You can add an optional argument $limit (default 0) that gives the minimum similarity the
        two strings must satisfy. "similarity" stops analyzing the string as soon as the result
        drops below the given limit, in which case the result will be invalid but lower than the
        given $limit. You can use this to speed up the common case of searching for the most similar
        string from a set by specifying the maximum similarity found so far.

SEE ALSO
     The basic algorithm is described in:
     "An O(ND) Difference Algorithm and its Variations", Eugene Myers,
     Algorithmica Vol. 1 No. 2, 1986, pp. 251-266;
     see especially section 4.2, which describes the variation used below.

     The basic algorithm was independently discovered as described in:
     "Algorithms for Approximate String Matching", E. Ukkonen,
     Information and Control Vol. 64, 1985, pp. 100-118.

AUTHOR
     Marc Lehmann <schmorp AT schmorp.de>
     http://home.schmorp.de/

     (the underlying fstrcmp function was taken from gnu diffutils and
     modified by Peter Miller <pmiller AT agso.au> and Marc Lehmann
     <schmorp AT schmorp.de>).