NAME

       fstrcmp - fuzzy comparison of strings

SYNOPSIS

       fstrcmp [ -p ] first‐string second‐string
       fstrcmp -w first‐string second‐string
       fstrcmp -a first‐file second‐file
       fstrcmp -s needle haystack...
       fstrcmp --version

DESCRIPTION

       The  fstrcmp  command is used to make fuzzy comparisons between strings.  The “edit distance” between the
       strings is printed, with 0.0 meaning the strings are utterly un‐alike, and 1.0 meaning  the  strings  are
       identical.

       You may need to quote the string to insulate them from the shell.

OPTIONS

       The fstrcmp command understands the following options:

       -a

       --files-as-bytes
               This  option  is  used  to  compare  two  files  as  arrays  of  bytes.   See fmemcmp(3) for more
               information.

       -p

       --pair  This option is used to compare two strings as  arrays  of  bytes.   This  is  the  default.   See
               fstrcmp(3) for more information.

       -s

       --select
               This  option  is  used to select the closest needle from the provided haystack alternatives.  The
               most similar (single) choice is printed.  If none are particularly similar, nothing  is  printed.
               See fstrcmp(3) for more information.  See below for example.

       -V

       --version
               This option may be used to print the version of the fstrcmp command, and then exit.

       -w

       --wide-pair
               This  option  is  used  to  compare  two  multi‐byte character strings.  See fstrcoll(3) for more
               information.

EXIT STATUS

       The fstrcmp command exits with status 1 on any error.  The fstrcmp command only exits with  status  0  if
       there are no errors.

EXAMPLE

       The fstrcmp --select option may be used in a shell script to improve error messages.
              case "$action" in
              start)
                  start
                  ;;
              stop)
                  stop
                  ;;
              restart)
                  stop
                  start
                  ;;
              *)
                  echo "$0: action \"$action\" unknown" 1>&2
                  guess=`fstrcmp --select "$action" stop start restart`
                  if [ "$guess" ]
                  then
                      echo "$0: did you mean \"$guess\" instead?" 1>&2
                  fi
                  exit 1
                  ;;
              esac
       Thus,  the  error message frequently suggests the correct action in the face of simple finger problems on
       the command line.

SEE ALSO

       fstrcmp(3)
               fuzzy comparison of strings

       fstrcoll(3)
               fuzzy comparison of two multi‐byte character strings

       fstrcmpi(3)
               fuzzy comparison of strings, integer variation

COPYRIGHT

       fstrcmp version 0.7
       Copyright (C) 2009 Peter Miller
       Peter Miller <pmiller@opensource.org.au>

       The comparison code is derived from the fuzzy comparison functions in GNU Gettext 0.17.  The GNU  Gettext
       comparison functions were, in turn, derived from GNU Diff 2.7.

       Copyright (C) 1988-2009 Free Software Foundation

                                                                                                      fstrcmp(1)