This Julia package computes various distances between AbstractStrings

Installation

The package is registered in the General registry and so can be installed at the REPL with ] add StringDistances.

Compare

The function compare returns a similarity score between two strings. 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. Its syntax is:

compare(s1::AbstractString, s2::AbstractString, dist::StringDistance)

• Edit Distances

  • Jaro Distance Jaro()
  • Levenshtein Distance Levenshtein()
  • Damerau-Levenshtein Distance DamerauLevenshtein()
  • RatcliffObershelp Distance RatcliffObershelp()

• Q-gram distances compare the set of all substrings of length q in each string.

  • QGram Distance Qgram(q::Int)
  • Cosine Distance Cosine(q::Int)
  • Jaccard Distance Jaccard(q::Int)
  • Overlap Distance Overlap(q::Int)
  • Sorensen-Dice Distance SorensenDice(q::Int)

• 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.
  • Partial returns the maximal similarity score between the shorter string and substrings of the longer string.
  • TokenSort adjusts for differences in word orders by reording words alphabetically.
  • TokenSet adjusts for differences in word orders and word numbers by comparing the intersection of two strings with each string.
  • TokenMax combines scores using the base distance, the Partial, TokenSort and TokenSet modifiers, with penalty terms depending on string lengths.

Some examples:

compare("martha", "marhta", Jaro())
compare("martha", "marhta", Winkler(Jaro()))
compare("martha", "marhta", QGram(2))
compare("martha", "marhta", Winkler(QGram(2)))
compare("martha", "marhta", Levenshtein())
compare("martha", "marhta", Partial(Levenshtein()))
compare("martha", "marhta", Jaro())
compare("martha", "marhta", TokenSet(Jaro()))
compare("martha", "marhta", TokenMax(RatcliffObershelp()))

A good distance to match strings composed of multiple words (like addresses) is TokenMax(Levenshtein()) (see fuzzywuzzy).

Find

• findmax returns the value and index of the element in itr with the highest similarity score with s. Its syntax is:

  findmax(s::AbstractString, itr, dist::StringDistance; min_score = 0.0)
  

• findall returns the indices of all elements in itr with a similarity score with s higher than a minimum value (default to 0.8). Its syntax is:

  findall(s::AbstractString, itr, dist::StringDistance; min_score = 0.8)
  

The functions findmax and findall are particularly optimized for Levenshtein and DamerauLevenshtein distances (as well as their modifications via Partial, TokenSort, TokenSet, or TokenMax).

Evaluate

The function compare returns a similarity score: a value of 0 means completely different and a value of 1 means completely similar. In contrast, the function evaluate returns the litteral distance between two strings, with a value of 0 being completely similar. Some distances are between 0 and 1, while others are unbouded.

compare("New York", "New York", Levenshtein())
#> 1.0
evaluate(Levenshtein(), "New York", "New York")
#> 0

References

• The stringdist Package for Approximate String Matching Mark P.J. van der Loo
• fuzzywuzzy