WOLFRAM

Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center
Wolfram Language Home Page »

EditDistance
✖
EditDistance

✖

gives the edit or Levenshtein distance between strings, vectors or biomolecular sequences u and v.

Details and Options

  • EditDistance[u,v] gives the number of one-element deletions, insertions, and substitutions required to transform u to v.
  • For strings, setting the option IgnoreCase->True makes EditDistance treat lower‐ and upper‐case letters as equivalent.

Examples

open allclose all

Basic Examples  (3)Summary of the most common use cases

Edit distance between two strings:

In[1]:=1
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-x5h86
Out[1]=1

Edit distance between two vectors:

In[1]:=1
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-csh1ij
Out[1]=1

Edit distance between biomolecular sequences:

In[1]:=1
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-68147z
Out[1]=1

Scope  (2)Survey of the scope of standard use cases

Compute distance between strings of unequal length:

In[1]:=1
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-icyapu
Out[1]=1

Compute distance between vectors of any length:

In[1]:=1
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-fmwkc6
Out[1]=1

Options  (1)Common values & functionality for each option

IgnoreCase  (1)

Obtain edit distance ignoring case of letters:

In[1]:=1
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-jxibo1
Out[1]=1

Applications  (2)Sample problems that can be solved with this function

Cluster string data using edit distance:

In[1]:=1
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-b2o51i
Out[1]=1

Cluster numeric data using edit distance:

In[1]:=1
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-c6gcmb
Out[1]=1

Properties & Relations  (2)Properties of the function, and connections to other functions

EditDistance is less than or equal to HammingDistance for strings of equal length:

In[1]:=1
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-8k3np
Out[1]=1
In[2]:=2
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-btvig
Out[2]=2

EditDistance is less than or equal to HammingDistance for vectors of equal length:

In[1]:=1
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-byq072
Out[1]=1
In[2]:=2
✖
https://wolfram.com/xid/0puyldih26-i5m6v8
Out[2]=2
Wolfram Research (2007), EditDistance, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html (updated 2020).
✖
Wolfram Research (2007), EditDistance, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html (updated 2020).

Text

Wolfram Research (2007), EditDistance, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html (updated 2020).

✖
Wolfram Research (2007), EditDistance, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html (updated 2020).

CMS

Wolfram Language. 2007. "EditDistance." Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Wolfram Research. Last Modified 2020. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html.

✖
Wolfram Language. 2007. "EditDistance." Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Wolfram Research. Last Modified 2020. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html.

APA

Wolfram Language. (2007). EditDistance. Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Retrieved from https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html

✖
Wolfram Language. (2007). EditDistance. Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Retrieved from https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html

BibTeX

@misc{reference.wolfram_2025_editdistance, author="Wolfram Research", title="{EditDistance}", year="2020", howpublished="\url{https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html}", note=[Accessed: 20-March-2025 ]}

✖
@misc{reference.wolfram_2025_editdistance, author="Wolfram Research", title="{EditDistance}", year="2020", howpublished="\url{https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html}", note=[Accessed: 20-March-2025 ]}

BibLaTeX

@online{reference.wolfram_2025_editdistance, organization={Wolfram Research}, title={EditDistance}, year={2020}, url={https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html}, note=[Accessed: 20-March-2025 ]}

✖
@online{reference.wolfram_2025_editdistance, organization={Wolfram Research}, title={EditDistance}, year={2020}, url={https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/EditDistance.html}, note=[Accessed: 20-March-2025 ]}