Levenshtein distance between two words is the minimum number of single-character edits (insertions, deletions or substitutions) required to change one word into the other. Also you can calculate "difference" between words as Levenshtein distance divided by length of longer word.
Few examples:
| word1 | word2 | Levenshtein distance (Case sensitive) |
Levenshtein distance (Case insensitive) |
difference (Case sensitive) |
difference (Case insensitive) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hi | HI | 1 | 0 | 1/2 | 0.0 |
| gitHub | GitLab | 3 | 2 | 1/2 | 1/3 |
| word | WORLD | 5 | 1 | 1.0 | 1/5 |
Usage examples:
import com.github.wslf.levenshteindistance;
...
LevenshteinCalculator calculator = new LevenshteinCalculator();
String word1 = "gitHub";
StringBuilder word2 = new StringBuilder("GitLab");
System.out.println("LevDist CaseSens: " + calculator.getLevenshteinDistance(word1, word2));
System.out.println("LevDist CaseIns: " + calculator.getLevenshteinDistanceIgnoreCase(word1, word2));
System.out.println("Diff CaseSens: " + calculator.getDifference(word1, word2));
System.out.println("Diff CaseIns: " + calculator.getDifferenceIgnoreCase(word1, word2));
String word3 = "GitHub";
System.out.println("LevDist CaseSens: " + calculator.getLevenshteinDistance(word1, word3, true));
System.out.println("LevDist CaseIns: " + calculator.getLevenshteinDistance(word1, word3, false));
System.out.println("Diff CaseSens: " + calculator.getDifference(word1, word3, true));
System.out.println("Diff CaseIns: " + calculator.getDifference(word1, word3, false));