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levenshtein
Synopsis
int levenshtein(string_one, string_two[, insert_cost][, substitution_cost][, delete_cost]);
string string_one: First
string to compare
string string_two: Second
string to compare
int insert_cost (optional):
Cost of inserting a character
int substitution_cost
(optional): Cost of substituting a character
int delete_cost (optional):
Cost of deleting a character
Description
levenshtein() is used to find the Levenshtein distance between two strings. The Levenshtein distance is defined as the fewest number of insert, substitution, and delete operations needed to transform one string into another string. The function is not case-sensitive.
PHP's implementation of levenshtein() gives each operation equal weight, while many other implementations give substitution twice the cost of insertion or deletion. The cost of each operation can be defined by setting the optional insert_cost , substitution_cost , and delete_cost parameters.
Note
levenshtein() is much faster than similar_text() ; however, similar_text() is likely to provide better results with less tweaking.
Note
PHP's implementation of levenshtein() cannot operate on strings longer than 255 characters in length.
See also
Example
Example 1205. Use levenshtein() to analyze how different a phrase is from its anagrams
<?php
$phrase = 'ACME Inc';
// Thanks to http://wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi !!
$anagrams = array('In Mecca','Nice Mac','Cam Nice','Can Mice');
foreach($anagrams as $anagram) {
$distance = levenshtein($phrase, $anagram);
$matches[$anagram] = $distance;
}
natsort($matches);
print_r($matches);
?>
Output:
Array
(
[Nice Mac] => 6
[Cam Nice] => 6
[Can Mice] => 6
[In Mecca] => 7
)