[PATCH v2] Document levenshtein.c
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
---
On Thu, 20 Nov 2008, Samuel Tardieu wrote:
> * Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> [2008-11-20
> 13:00:35 +0100]
>
> | How about this?
>
> I think it still lacks a note about what "deletion" and
> "insertion" means (is that a character deleted from string1 to obtain
> string2 or the reverse?). In most implementation, you use the same
> cost for insertion and deletion so the function is symetrical, but
> this implementation is more powerful.
Second paragraph and last sentence were added.
levenshtein.c | 37 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 files changed, 37 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/levenshtein.c b/levenshtein.c
index db52f2c..ebef34b 100644
--- a/levenshtein.c
+++ b/levenshtein.c
@@ -1,6 +1,43 @@
#include "cache.h"
#include "levenshtein.h"
+/*
+ * This function implements the Damerau-Levenshtein algorithm to
+ * calculate a distance between strings.
+ *
+ * Basically, it says how many letters need to be swapped, substituted,
+ * deleted from, or added to string1, at least, to get string2.
+ *
+ * The idea is to build a distance matrix for the substrings of both
+ * strings. To avoid a large space complexity, only the last three rows
+ * are kept in memory (if swaps had the same or higher cost as one deletion
+ * plus one insertion, only two rows would be needed).
+ *
+ * At any stage, "i + 1" denotes the length of the current substring of
+ * string1 that the distance is calculated for.
+ *
+ * row2 holds the current row, row1 the previous row (i.e. for the substring
+ * of string1 of length "i"), and row0 the row before that.
+ *
+ * In other words, at the start of the big loop, row2[j + 1] contains the
+ * Damerau-Levenshtein distance between the substring of string1 of length
+ * "i" and the substring of string2 of length "j + 1".
+ *
+ * All the big loop does is determine the partial minimum-cost paths.
+ *
+ * It does so by calculating the costs of the path ending in characters
+ * i (in string1) and j (in string2), respectively, given that the last
+ * operation is a substition, a swap, a deletion, or an insertion.
+ *
+ * This implementation allows the costs to be weighted:
+ *
+ * - w (as in "sWap")
+ * - s (as in "Substition")
+ * - a (for insertion, AKA "Add")
+ * - d (as in "Deletion")
+ *
+ * Note that this algorithm calculates a distance _iff_ d == a.
+ */
int levenshtein(const char *string1, const char *string2,
int w, int s, int a, int d)
{
--
1.6.0.2.763.g72663
Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>