More use of levenshtein?

Perhaps we could go one step further when we issue this error message?

  $ git checkout -b jc/ls-files-i-dir maitn-1.7.8
  fatal: git checkout: updating paths is incompatible with switching branches.
  Did you intend to checkout 'maitn-1.7.8' which can not be resolved as commit?

Yes, I do have maint-1.7.8 branch in my private repository.