[R] Levenshtein-Distance

[R. Michael Weylandt]

Have you considered simply changing your numbers into strings with
as.character()?

E.g.,

library(vwr)
levenshtein.distance("aba","cda")


num1 <- 121; num2 <- 341
levenshtein.distance(as.character(num1),as.character(num2))

I find that last line a little verbose to type, so I'd write a little
helper which adds some generality as well.

LD <- function(s1, s2){
    require(vwr)
    s1 = as.character(s1)
    s2 = as.character(s2)
    t(sapply(s1, levenshtein.distance, s2))
}

Note that you can put vectors of numbers directly into LD().

Hope this helps,

Michael

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 7:53 AM, Jörg Reuter <joerg at reuter.at> wrote:
> Yes, I see many package. But the Problem is, the Package compare strings.
> But there is a diffrent between the caracter 1 and 2 and the number "12".
> All package I see compare every letter, but a number have many digits but
> the digits make only sense if the function see them together. I tough to
> change the number in caracter like 1->a but I have to much numbers.
>
> Am 20.10.2011 13:32 schrieb "Mark Difford" <mark_difford at yahoo.co.uk>:
>>
>> On Oct 20, 2011; 10:07am  Jörg Reuter wrote:
>>
>> > I want compare a Matrix row by row and at the end I want to a Matrix
> with
>> > the Levenshtein-Distance.
>>
>> Jörg,
>>
>> To begin with, try the following at the command prompt:
>>
>> ##
>> RSiteSearch("Levenshtein")
>>
>> Shows, amongst other hits, that package vwr has a function to calculate
>> Levenshtein distances.
>>
>> Regards, Mark.
>>
>> -----
>> Mark Difford (Ph.D.)
>> Research Associate
>> Botany Department
>> Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
>> Port Elizabeth, South Africa
>> --
>> View this message in context:
> http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Levenshtein-Distance-tp3920951p3921252.html
>> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>
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