fast-levenshtein

What is fast-levenshtein?

The fast-levenshtein npm package is a high-performance JavaScript implementation of the Levenshtein algorithm, which measures the difference between two sequences. It is commonly used to determine the similarity between two strings by calculating the minimum number of single-character edits (insertions, deletions, or substitutions) required to change one word into the other.

What are fast-levenshtein's main functionalities?

Calculate Levenshtein distance

This feature allows you to calculate the Levenshtein distance between two strings. The code sample demonstrates how to use the package to find the distance between 'back' and 'book', which is 2.

const levenshtein = require('fast-levenshtein');
const distance = levenshtein.get('back', 'book');
console.log(distance); // Output: 2

Other packages similar to fast-levenshtein

levenshtein

This package provides a simple implementation of the Levenshtein algorithm. It is not as performance-optimized as fast-levenshtein but is straightforward to use for basic needs.

levenshtein-edit-distance

Similar to fast-levenshtein, this package calculates the Levenshtein edit distance. It focuses on being a small and fast implementation, but fast-levenshtein might still have performance advantages in certain scenarios.

string-similarity

This package goes beyond just calculating the Levenshtein distance by providing a way to compare two strings and find the similarity percentage. It uses a different algorithm for comparison and can be used for more complex string comparison tasks.

natural

Natural is a general natural language facility for Node.js. It includes a Levenshtein distance implementation among other features like tokenization, stemming, classification, phonetics, and more. It is more comprehensive but less specialized than fast-levenshtein.

README

fast-levenshtein - Levenshtein algorithm in Javascript

A Javascript implementation of the Levenshtein algorithm with locale-specific collator support. This uses fastest-levenshtein under the hood.

Features

• Works in node.js and in the browser.
• Locale-sensitive string comparisons if needed.
• Comprehensive test suite.

Installation

$ npm install fast-levenshtein

CDN

The latest version is now also always available at https://npm-cdn.com/pkg/fast-levenshtein/

Examples

Default usage

var levenshtein = require('fast-levenshtein');

var distance = levenshtein.get('back', 'book');   // 2
var distance = levenshtein.get('我愛你', '我叫你');   // 1

Locale-sensitive string comparisons

It supports using Intl.Collator for locale-sensitive string comparisons:

var levenshtein = require('fast-levenshtein');

levenshtein.get('mikailovitch', 'Mikhaïlovitch', { useCollator: true});
// 1

Building and Testing

To build the code and run the tests:

$ npm install -g grunt-cli
$ npm install
$ npm run build

Performance

This uses fastest-levenshtein under the hood.

Contributing

If you wish to submit a pull request please update and/or create new tests for any changes you make and ensure the grunt build passes.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

License

MIT - see LICENSE.md