Finds degree of similarity between two strings, based on Dice's Coefficient, which is mostly better than Levenshtein distance.

Installation

In a terminal or command line navigated to your project folder:

npm install stringc.ahk

In your code only export.ahk needs to be included:

#Include %A_ScriptDir%\node_modules
#Include stringc.ahk\export.ahk
ostringc := new stringc()

ostringc.compare("test", "testing")
; => 0.67
ostringc.compare("Hello", "hello")
; => 1.0

API

Including the module provides a class stringc with three methods: .compare, .compareAll, and .bestMatch

compare(string1, string2, [function])

Returns a fraction between 0 and 1, which indicates the degree of similarity between the two strings. 0 indicates completely different strings, 1 indicates identical strings. The comparison is case-insensitive.

Arguments

string1 (string): The first string

string2 (string): The second string

function (function): A function to applied to both strings prior to comparison.

Order does not make a difference.

Returns

(Number): A fraction from 0 to 1, both inclusive. Higher number indicates more similarity.

Example

stringc.compare("healed", "sealed")
; => 0.80

stringc.compare("Olive-green table for sale, in extremely good condition."
	, "For sale: table in very good  condition, olive green in colour.")
; => 0.71

stringc.compare("Olive-green table for sale, in extremely good condition."
	, "For sale: green Subaru Impreza, 210,000 miles")
; => 0.30

stringc.compare("Olive-green table for sale, in extremely good condition."
	, "Wanted: mountain bike with at least 21 gears.")
; => 0.11

compareAll(targetStrings, mainString, [function])

Compares mainString against each string in targetStrings.

Arguments

targetStrings (array): Each string in this array will be matched against the main string.

mainString (string): The string to match each target string against.

function (function): A function to applied to each element prior to comparison.

Returns

(Object): An object with a ratings property, which gives a similarity rating for each target string, and a bestMatch property, which specifies which target string was most similar to the main string. The array of ratings are sorted from higest rating to lowest.

Example

stringc.compareAll(["For sale: green Subaru Impreza, 210,000 miles"
	, "For sale: table in very good condition, olive green in colour."
	, "Wanted: mountain bike with at least 21 gears."]
	, "Olive-green table for sale, in extremely good condition.")
; =>
{ ratings:
	[{ target: "For sale: table in very good condition, olive green in colour.",
		rating: 0.71 },
	{ target: "For sale: green Subaru Impreza, 210,000 miles",
		rating: 0.30 },
	{ target: "Wanted: mountain bike with at least 21 gears.",
		rating: 0.11 }],
	bestMatch:
	{ target: "For sale: table in very good condition, olive green in colour.",
		rating: 0.71 } }

bestMatch(targetStrings, mainString, [function])

Compares mainString against each string in targetStrings.

Arguments

mainString (string): The string to match each target string against. targetStrings (Array): Each string in this array will be matched against the main string. function (function): A function to applied to each element prior to comparison.

Returns

(String): The string that was most similar to the first argument string.

Example

stringc.bestMatch([" hard to    "
	, "hard to"
	, "Hard 2"]
	, "Hard to")
; => "hard to"