similar_text

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

similar_text — Calculate the similarity between two strings

Description

int similar_text ( string $first , string $second [, float &$percent ] )

This calculates the similarity between two strings as described in Programming Classics: Implementing the World's Best Algorithms by Oliver (ISBN 0-131-00413-1). Note that this implementation does not use a stack as in Oliver's pseudo code, but recursive calls which may or may not speed up the whole process. Note also that the complexity of this algorithm is O(N**3) where N is the length of the longest string.

Parameters

first

The first string.

second

The second string.

percent

By passing a reference as third argument, similar_text() will calculate the similarity in percent for you.

Return Values

Returns the number of matching chars in both strings.

See Also

  • levenshtein() - Calculate Levenshtein distance between two strings
  • soundex() - Calculate the soundex key of a string