editdist(X;Y)

Returns the Levenshtein edit distance between two given strings.

Syntax

editdist(X;Y)

Input

Argument Type Description
X text The string on which to apply the function

A scalar value or the name of a column

Y text The string (or the name of a column containing string values) to transform X into

Return Value

The result is the integer value corresponding to the Levenshtein edit distance between X and Y. The Levenshtein edit distance is the minimum number of edits (defined as insertions, deletions, or single-character substitutions) required to transform one string into the other.

If X or Y is N/A, the result is the length of the other argument.

Sample Usage

value1 value2 editdist(value1;value2)
'cat' 'rat' 1
'apples' 'oranges' 5
'apples' 'apples' 0

Additional Information

  • This function does not work with Unicode (UTF-8) strings.
  • For a Unicode-compliant alternative, consider strdist(X;Y;M;N).