Understanding string distances

Intermediate Regular Expressions in R

Angelo Zehr

Data Journalist

What is a string distance?

rain ran run

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Intermediate Regular Expressions in R

What is a string distance?

sunday surday saurday saturday

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Intermediate Regular Expressions in R

Real world applications

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Intermediate Regular Expressions in R

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Intermediate Regular Expressions in R

String distances in R

library(stringdist)
stringdist("saturday", "sunday", method = "lv")

Returns:

3

Is identical:

stringdist("sunday", "saturday", method = "lv")
Intermediate Regular Expressions in R

Finding a match

amatch(
  x = "Sonday",
  table = c("Friday", "Saturday", "Sunday"),
  maxDist = 1,
  method = "lv"
)

Returns:

3
Intermediate Regular Expressions in R

Let's practice!

Intermediate Regular Expressions in R

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