Levenshtein Distance

Two words are close, if few things separate them orthographically or phonetically. The distance between two words is greater as the number of differences between the two words is large.

Example: CLOSE and CLOTHES are similar phonetically (homophone)

Example: TAKE and MAKE are similar graphycally (a kind of near-homograph)

The distance from Levenshtein is symmetrical, the distance from STRING1 to STRING2 is equal to the distance from STRING2 to STRING1

The Levenshtein distance measures the similarity between two strings of characters. It is equal to the minimum number of characters to be deleted, inserted, or replaced to move from one string to another.

Example: DCODE is at a distance of 2 from DECODER (1- add E and 2- add R)

Example: DECODER is at a distance of 2 from DCODE (1- remove E and 2- remove R)

Calculating the distance between 2 strings of characters can make it possible to know their quantity of differences and thus also their amount of similarity. So the Levenshtein calculation algorithm can be used to determine typing errors or misspellings, words for which the proximity of the compared chains is strong.