Similarity(3)						User Contributed Perl Documentation					     Similarity(3)

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 specifing 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@schmorp.de>
	http://home.schmorp.de/

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

perl v5.16.3							    2008-11-04							     Similarity(3)