String::Levenshtein - Compute the Levenshtein distance between two strings
use String::Levenshtein qw(distance prefix_distance);
$d = distance ("abcd", "abxc")
$d = prefix_distance("Smith", "Smithson")
String::Levenshtein computes the Levenshtein distance between two strings. The Levenshtein distance is defined as the minimum number of characters that must be added, removed, or changed in order to transform one string into another.
The Levenshtein distance is also called the edit distance.
distance($string1, $string2)
Returns the Levenshtein distance between $string1 and $string2.
Returns -1 on error.
prefix_distance($string1, $string2)
Returns the smallest number of characters that must be added, removed or changed in order to transform the shorter of $string1 and $string2 into a prefix of the longer.
Returns -1 on error.
Levenshtein prefix
String1 String2 distance distance
<empty> <empty> 0 0
abc <empty> 3 0
<empty> xyz 3 0
abc abc 0 0
abc xyz 3 3
abc abd 1 1
gumbo gambol 2 1
aaaa bbbbbbb 7 4
McDougall MacDougal 2 2
Smith Smithson 3 0
Smithson Smith 3 0
@EXPORT
Nothing
@EXPORT_OK
distance and prefix_distance return -1 on error.
The only error is memory allocation failure.
String::Approx
Steven W. McDougall, <swmcd@theworld.com>
Copyright 2002 by Steven W. McDougall. This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.