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vbaexcellevenshtein-distance

Levenshtein Distance in VBA


I have excel sheet with data which I want to get Levenshtein Distance between them. I already tried to export as text, read in from script (php), run Levenshtein (calculate Levenshtein Distance), save it to excel again.

But I am looking for a way to programatically calculate a Levenshtein Distance in VBA. How would I go about doing so?


Solution

  • Translated from Wikipedia :

    Option Explicit
    Public Function Levenshtein(s1 As String, s2 As String)
    
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim j As Integer
    Dim l1 As Integer
    Dim l2 As Integer
    Dim d() As Integer
    Dim min1 As Integer
    Dim min2 As Integer
    
    l1 = Len(s1)
    l2 = Len(s2)
    ReDim d(l1, l2)
    For i = 0 To l1
        d(i, 0) = i
    Next
    For j = 0 To l2
        d(0, j) = j
    Next
    For i = 1 To l1
        For j = 1 To l2
            If Mid(s1, i, 1) = Mid(s2, j, 1) Then
                d(i, j) = d(i - 1, j - 1)
            Else
                min1 = d(i - 1, j) + 1
                min2 = d(i, j - 1) + 1
                If min2 < min1 Then
                    min1 = min2
                End If
                min2 = d(i - 1, j - 1) + 1
                If min2 < min1 Then
                    min1 = min2
                End If
                d(i, j) = min1
            End If
        Next
    Next
    Levenshtein = d(l1, l2)
    End Function
    

    ?Levenshtein("saturday","sunday")

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