Compare Strings for Percentage Match

Hello all,

Ok, I am banging my head against the wall for a while now trying different techniques. None of them are working well.

I have two strings. I need to compare them and get an exact percentage of match,

ie. "four score and seven years ago" TO "for scor and sevn yeres ago"

Well, I first started by comparing every word to every word, tracking every hit, and percentage = count \ numOfWords. Nope, didn't take into account misspelled words. ("four" <> "for" even though it is close)

Then I started by trying to compare every char in each char, incrementing the string char if not a match (to count for misspellings). But, I would get false hits because the first string could have every char in the second but not in the exact order of the second. ("stuff avail" <> "stu vail" (but it would come back as such, low percentage, but a hit. 9 \ 11 = 81%))

SO, I then tried comparing PAIRS of chars in each string. If string1[i] = string2[k] AND string1[i+1] = string2[k+1], increment the count, and increment the "k" when it doesn't match (to track mispellings. "for" and "four" should come back with a 75% hit.) That doesn't seem to work either. It is getting closer, but even with an exact match it is only returns 94%. And then it really gets screwed up when something is really misspelled. (Code at the bottom)

Any ideas or directions to go?

Thanks,

Josh

count = 0
j = 0
k = 0
While j < strTempName.Length - 2 And k < strTempFile.Length - 2
    ' To ignore non letters or digits '
    If Not strTempName(j).IsLetter(strTempName(j)) Then
        j += 1
    End If

    ' To ignore non letters or digits '
    If Not strTempFile(k).IsLetter(strTempFile(k)) Then
        k += 1
    End If

    ' compare pair of chars '
    While (strTempName(j) <> strTempFile(k) And _ 
           strTempName(j + 1) <> strTempFile(k + 1) And _ 
           k < strTempFile.Length - 2)
        k += 1
    End While
    count += 1
    j += 1
    k += 1

End While

perc = count / (strTempName.Length - 1)

Tags: Visual Basic