In information theory and computer science, the edit distance between two strings of characters generally refers to the Levenshtein distance. However, according to Nico Jacobs, “The term ‘edit distance’ is sometimes used to refer to the distance in which insertions and deletions have equal cost and replacements have twice the cost of an insertion”.
It may also refer to the whole class of string metrics that measure distance as the (weighted or unweighted) number of operations required to transform a string into another. There are several different ways to define an edit distance, depending on which edit operations are allowed: replace, delete, insert, transpose, and so on. There are algorithms to calculate its value under various definitions:
- Hamming distance
- Levenshtein distance (the most common definition, calculated by Hirschberg's algorithm or the Wagner–Fischer algorithm)
- Damerau–Levenshtein distance
- Jaro–Winkler distance
Famous quotes containing the words edit and/or distance:
“To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit it and read it are old women over their tea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I do believe that the outward and the inward life correspond; that if any should succeed to live a higher life, others would not know of it; that difference and distance are one. To set about living a true life is to go on a journey to a distant country, gradually to find ourselves surrounded by new scenes and men; and as long as the old are around me, I know that I am not in any true sense living a new or a better life.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)