NIST

Levenshtein distance

(definition)

Definition: (1) The smallest number of insertions, deletions, and substitutions required to change one string or tree into another. (2) A Θ(m × n) algorithm to compute the distance between strings, where m and n are the lengths of the strings.

Also known as edit distance.

Generalization (I am a kind of ...)
string matching with errors.

Aggregate child (... is a part of or used in me.)
edit operation.

See also double metaphone, soundex, Jaro-Winkler, Hamming distance.

Note: (1) From Algorithms and Theory of Computation Handbook, page 14-35, Copyright © 1999 by CRC Press LLC. Appearing in the Dictionary of Computer Science, Engineering and Technology, Copyright © 2000 CRC Press LLC.

Author: CRC-A

Implementation

Michael Gilleland's Levenshtein distance (Java, C++, Visual Basic), includes a great explanation and links to code in Perl, C, JavaScript, Python, and many more languages. Many implementations (Ada, C++, Lisp, Io, Java, OCaml, Octave, PHP, Python, Ruby, Visual Basic).

More information

Wikipedia entry which has links to implementations. March 2003 pictures of Levenshtein at a reception.

Vladimir I. Levenshtein, Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals, Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR, 163(4):845-848, 1965 (Russian). English translation in Soviet Physics Doklady, 10(8):707-710, 1966.
(Doklady is Russian for "Report". Sometimes transliterated in English as Doclady or Dokladi.)


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If you have suggestions, corrections, or comments, please get in touch with Paul Black.

Entry modified 22 June 2015.
HTML page formatted Mon Jul 20 14:31:11 2015.

Cite this as:
Algorithms and Theory of Computation Handbook, CRC Press LLC, 1999, "Levenshtein distance", in Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures [online], Vreda Pieterse and Paul E. Black, eds. 22 June 2015. (accessed TODAY) Available from: http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/Levenshtein.html