Finding the Closest Match

[dyluck]

Hi There,

 

Trying to figure out the best function to display the closest match to a string.  I have tried similar_text() and levenshtein()

 

I wrote this myself and it doesn't seem to work well.

function checksimilar( $word, $wordlist ) {

foreach($wordlist as $value) {	
similar_text($word, $value, $percent);	
if($percent > .75) { $newstring[$value] = $percent; }
else { $thekey = "No Close Suggestions"; $newstring[$thekey] = 1; }
}

asort($newstring);
$key = key($newstring);

return $key;

}

 

Tried this too, doesn't work very good either:

 

function checksimilar( $word, $wordlist ) {
$input = $word;

// array of words to check against
$words  = $wordlist;

// no shortest distance found, yet
$shortest = -1;

// loop through words to find the closest
foreach ($words as $word) {

    // calculate the distance between the input word,
    // and the current word
    $lev = levenshtein($input, $word);

    // check for an exact match
    if ($lev == 0) {

        // closest word is this one (exact match)
        $closest = $word;
        $shortest = 0;

        // break out of the loop; we've found an exact match
        break;
    }

    // if this distance is less than the next found shortest
    // distance, OR if a next shortest word has not yet been found
    if ($lev <= $shortest || $shortest < 0) {
        // set the closest match, and shortest distance
        $closest  = $word;
        $shortest = $lev;
    }
}

echo "Input word: $input\n";
if ($shortest <> 0) {
    return $closest;

} //end checksimilar

 

Here is example of what the comparrision is comparing:

 

$word = GameFly_Online_Video_Game_Rentals-Rental_Product_Catalog.txt.gz

 

$wordlist = array(GameSharkStore-Product_Catalog.txt.gz, GameFly_Online_Video_Games_Rentals-Rental_Product_Catalog2.txt.gz, Geeks_com-Product_Catalog_.txt.gz);

 

I of course want it to suggest: GameFly_Online_Video_Games_Rentals-Rental_Product_Catalog2.txt.gz

its slightly different then the original word but very close.

 

Hope someone else has a better way of doing this!

 

 

[TOA]

Regex (Regular Expression)

 

also look into preg_match() here

http://php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match.php

 

probably you're best bet

[dyluck]

I've used preg_match in other applications however not in this one.  do you have a practical example?

[AbraCadaver]

Change .75 to 75 and change asort() to arsort() and it will work as you expect.