[RESOLVED] Help with levenshtein function

daltman1967

Supposedly, I can use the levenshtein function to test the similarity of words. My word list (garnered from a MYSQL database) is as follows:

Aloha
asd
Broward
Ft Lauderdale
Hollywood
South Florida
Test10
Your Way

my function is:
function closest($seed, $haystack)
{
$shortest = -1;
foreach ($haystack as $word)
{
$lev = levenshtein($seed, $word);
if ($lev == 0)
{
$closest = $word; $shortest = 0; break;
}
if ($lev <= $shortest || $shortest <0)
{
$closest = $word; $shortest = $lev;
}
}
return $closest;
}

I have all the above words in an array called $words. I'm calling the function like this:

$s = closest($m, $words);

where $m is the value of the word to search for. I searched for "apple" and got "ASD"; I searched for "yellow" and got "Test10" ... then searched for "you" and got "ASD." I'm trying to get the nearest match, so I can modify the search parameters, i.e., I type "apple" and get both "aloha" and "asd," as being the one below, one above; search for "yellow" would get "Test10" and "Your Way"; the search for "you" would get "Your Way".

Any ideas?

dagon

is your desired match based on sorting alphabetically? because that's not how levenshtein() does its matching.

based on above you could add your search word to the array, the run sort() on it then array_search() will give you the key of your seed word so -1 and +1 will be the word before and after (sorted alphabetically)

dagon

i was bored enough to give it a try

<?php

$haystack=array('Aloha','asd','Broward','Ft Lauderdale','Hollywood','South Florida','Test10','Your Way');


function closest($seed,$haystack){
$haystack[]=$seed;
$haystack = array_map('strtolower', $haystack);
sort($haystack,SORT_STRING);
$key=array_search($seed,$haystack);
$out=array('above'=>$haystack[$key-1],'below'=>$haystack[$key+1]);
return $out;
}

print_r(closest('you',$haystack));
?>

Array ( [above] => test10 [below] => your way )

you will need to do something to take care of your seed word being first or last so there may not be one of the 2 values in returned array

daltman1967

Thank you SO much! I'd been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to get the closest (above & below) match alphabetically, and this works perfectly - first time, every time! Bravo! 🙂 🆒