29f0beccbd | ||
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benchmark | ||
src | ||
test | ||
.travis.yml | ||
LICENSE.md | ||
README.md | ||
REQUIRE |
README.md
This Julia package computes various distances between strings.
Syntax
The package defines two functions:
- The function
evaluate
return the litteral distance between two strings. - The function
compare
returns a similarity score between two strings, which is based on the inverse of the distance. The function always returns a score between 0 and 1, with a value of 0 being completely different and a value of 1 being completely similar.
using StringDistances
evaluate(Hamming(), "martha", "martha")
#> 0.0
compare(Hamming(), "martha", "martha")
#> 1.0
compare(Hamming(), "martha", "marhta")
#> 0.6666666666666667
Distances
Edit Distances
- Damerau-Levenshtein Distance
DamerauLevenshtein()
- Hamming Distance
Hamming()
- Jaro Distance
Jaro()
- Levenshtein Distance
Levenshtein()
Q-Grams Distances
Q-gram distances compare the set of all substrings of length q
in each string.
- QGram Distance
Qgram(q)
- Cosine Distance
Cosine(q)
- Jaccard Distance
Jaccard(q)
- Overlap Distance
Overlap(q)
- Sorensen-Dice Distance
SorensenDice(q)
Others
- RatcliffObershelp Distance
RatcliffObershelp()
Modifiers
The package includes distance "modifiers", that can be applied to any distance.
-
Winkler boosts the similary score of strings with common prefixes. The Winkler adjustment was originally defined for the Jaro similarity score but this package defines it for any string distance.
compare(Jaro(), "martha", "marhta") #> 0.9444444444444445 compare(Winkler(Jaro()), "martha", "marhta") #> 0.9611111111111111 compare(QGram(2), "william", "williams") #> 0.9230769230769231 compare(Winkler(QGram(2)), "william", "williams") #> 0.9538461538461539
-
Modifiers from the Python library fuzzywuzzy .
-
Partial returns the maximal similarity score between the shorter string and substrings of the longer string.
compare(Levenshtein(), "New York Yankees", "Yankees") #> 0.4375 compare(Partial(Levenshtein()), "New York Yankees", "Yankees") #> 1.0
-
TokenSort adjusts for differences in word orders by reording words alphabetically.
compare(RatcliffObershelp(), "mariners vs angels", "angels vs mariners") #> 0.44444 compare(TokenSort(RatcliffObershelp()),"mariners vs angels", "angels vs mariners") #> 1.0
-
TokenSet adjusts for differences in word orders and word numbers by comparing the intersection of two strings with each string.
compare(Jaro(),"mariners vs angels", "los angeles angels at seattle mariners") #> 0.559904 compare(TokenSet(Jaro()),"mariners vs angels", "los angeles angels at seattle mariners") #> 0.944444
-
TokenMax combines scores using the base distance, the
Partial
,TokenSort
andTokenSet
modifiers, with penalty terms depending on string lengths.compare(TokenMax(RatcliffObershelp()),"mariners vs angels", "los angeles angels at seattle mariners") #> 0.855
-
Which distance should I use?
As a rule of thumb,
- Standardize strings before comparing them (correct for uppercases, punctuations, whitespaces, accents, abbreviations...)
- Don't use Edit Distances if word order do not matter.
- The distance
Tokenmax(RatcliffObershelp())
is a good default choice.
References
- The stringdist Package for Approximate String Matching Mark P.J. van der Loo
- fuzzywuzzy blog post