Learn something new everyday. I always wondered how spell checkers are done. Thanks.
John Machin wrote: > John Henry wrote: > > I am just wondering what's with get_close_matches() in difflib. What's > > the magic? How fuzzy do I need to get in order to get a match? > > Are you desperate to understand the inner workings of difflib, or do > you want merely to do some fuzzy matching of strings using a well-known > somewhat-more-understandable zillions-of-implementations metric? > > If the latter, google "Levenshtein distance" for the metric, and > "Python Levenshtein" -- first hit for me is an implementation in a > Python C-extension. If you don't have the ability to compile a C > extension, or don't need the speed, there should be a few pure-Python > versions around; I'm specifically aware of one by Magnus Lie Hetland. > It's less than a screenful of code; good idea to grab it anyway for > educational purposes -- a quite Pythonic implementation of the > traditional algorithm. > > HTH, > John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list