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@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 v5.38.2                                       2024-03-31                                    Similarity(3pm)