Is there any program for fuzzy string matching, which provides a match score?

I have list of strings in file A and file B. I want to take each string in file A and find the most similar string in file B.

For this, I am looking for a tool that provides fuzzy comparing.

for example:

$ fuzzy_compare "Some string" "Some string"
100

Where 100 is some equality ratio. For example Levenshtein distance.

Is there any utility? I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

Solution 1:

I found this page which provides implementations of the Levenshtein distance algorithm in different languages. So, for example in bash, you could do:

#!/bin/bash
function levenshtein {
    if [ "$#" -ne "2" ]; then
        echo "Usage: $0 word1 word2" >&2
    elif [ "${#1}" -lt "${#2}" ]; then
        levenshtein "$2" "$1"
    else
        local str1len=$((${#1}))
        local str2len=$((${#2}))
        local d i j
        for i in $(seq 0 $(((str1len+1)*(str2len+1)))); do
            d[i]=0
        done
        for i in $(seq 0 $((str1len))); do
            d[$((i+0*str1len))]=$i
        done
        for j in $(seq 0 $((str2len))); do
            d[$((0+j*(str1len+1)))]=$j
        done

        for j in $(seq 1 $((str2len))); do
            for i in $(seq 1 $((str1len))); do
                [ "${1:i-1:1}" = "${2:j-1:1}" ] && local cost=0 || local cost=1
                local del=$((d[(i-1)+str1len*j]+1))
                local ins=$((d[i+str1len*(j-1)]+1))
                local alt=$((d[(i-1)+str1len*(j-1)]+cost))
                d[i+str1len*j]=$(echo -e "$del\n$ins\n$alt" | sort -n | head -1)
            done
        done
        echo ${d[str1len+str1len*(str2len)]}
    fi
}

while read str1; do
        while read str2; do
                lev=$(levenshtein "$str1" "$str2");
                printf '%s / %s : %s\n' "$str1" "$str2" "$lev"
        done < "$2"
done < "$1"

Save that as ~/bin/levenshtein.sh, make it executable (chmod a+x ~/bin/levenshtein.sh) and run it on your two files. For example:

$ cat fileA
foo
zoo
bar
fob
baar
$ cat fileB
foo
loo
baar
bob
gaf
$ a.sh fileA fileB
foo / foo : 0
foo / loo : 1
foo / baar : 4
foo / bob : 2
foo / gaf : 3
zoo / foo : 1
zoo / loo : 1
zoo / baar : 4
zoo / bob : 2
zoo / gaf : 3
bar / foo : 3
bar / loo : 3
bar / baar : 1
bar / bob : 2
bar / gaf : 2
fob / foo : 1
fob / loo : 2
fob / baar : 4
fob / bob : 1
fob / gaf : 3
baar / foo : 4
baar / loo : 4
baar / baar : 0
baar / bob : 3
baar / gaf : 3

That's fine for a few patterns but will get very slow for larger files. If that's an issue, try one of the implementations in other languages. For example Perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl 
use List::Util qw(min);

sub levenshtein
{
    my ($str1, $str2) = @_;
    my @ar1 = split //, $str1;
    my @ar2 = split //, $str2;

    my @dist;
    $dist[$_][0] = $_ foreach (0 .. @ar1);
    $dist[0][$_] = $_ foreach (0 .. @ar2);

    foreach my $i (1 .. @ar1) {
        foreach my $j (1 .. @ar2) {
            my $cost = $ar1[$i - 1] eq $ar2[$j - 1] ? 0 : 1;
            $dist[$i][$j] = min(
                            $dist[$i - 1][$j] + 1, 
                            $dist[$i][$j - 1] + 1, 
                            $dist[$i - 1][$j - 1] + $cost
                             );
        }
    }

    return $dist[@ar1][@ar2];
}
open(my $fh1, "$ARGV[0]");
open(my $fh2, "$ARGV[1]");
chomp(my @strings1=<$fh1>);
chomp(my @strings2=<$fh2>);

foreach my $str1 (@strings1) {
    foreach my $str2 (@strings2) {
        my $lev=levenshtein($str1, $str2);
        print "$str1 / $str2 : $lev\n";
    }
}

As above, save the script as ~/bin/levenshtein.pl and make it executable and run it with the two files as arguments:

~/bin/levenstein.pl fileA fileB

Even in the very small files used here, the Perl approach is 10 times faster than the bash one:

$ time levenshtein.sh fileA fileB > /dev/null

real    0m0.965s
user    0m0.070s
sys     0m0.057s

$ time levenshtein.pl fileA fileB > /dev/null
real    0m0.011s
user    0m0.010s
sys     0m0.000s

Solution 2:

I am aware that this is a very old thread but I found it because I was looking for the same thing. And I found it:

The fstrcmp command will do exactly what you are asking:

> fstrcmp "Some string" "Some string"
1.0000
> fstrcmp "Some string" "Other string"
0.6957
> fstrcmp "Some string" "Pangalactic garglebalster"
0.2222

According to the manpage, the resulting numbers are the edit distance which I take to be the same as Levenshtein distance.