Levenshtein edit distance library
Project description
Levenshtein edit distance library for Python, Apache-licensed. Written by Lars Buitinck, Netherlands eScience Center, with contributions from Isaac Sijaranamual, University of Amsterdam.
Performs distance computations on either byte strings or Unicode codepoints.
Installation
Make sure you have Cython and a C++ compiler installed:
pip install cython
Installing a C++ compiler is so platform-dependent that I won’t show instructions. Consult your package manager.
Then:
python setup.py install
To run the tests, but not to actually use leven, you need six and Nose.
Usage
>>> from leven import levenshtein
>>> levenshtein("hello, world!", "goodbye, cruel world!")
13
About the implementation
The core algorithms have been implemented in C++. I used this instead of C to get templates, easier memory management and a better standard library, so the C++ code probably looks C-ish.
Todo
Implement Ukkonen’s algorithm for bounded Levenshtein distance
Implement Levenshtein automata for fast neighbor search in string spaces
Implement weighted Levenshtein distance
