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pythoncomparisonsimilarity

Compare two integers for similarity

Example:

number1 = 54378
number2 = 54379
if number1 (is similar to) number2:
   print (number1 + " " + number2)
   input("what to do")

I would like to compare between these two numbers, and let the program notify me when this kind of (between number1 and number2 ) similarity happens.

I would like the solution to be flexible with some room for more similarities (_ust the first digit is different).

BTW, I am using Python 3.X

Solution

  • You can use difflib for this:

    >>> from difflib import SequenceMatcher
>>> number1 = 54378
>>> number2 = 54379
>>> SequenceMatcher(None, str(number1), str(number2)).ratio()
0.80000000000000004

    After creating a SequenceMatcher object with string representations of their numbers, use ratio() (or quick_ratio() or real_quick_ratio() if speed is an issue) to get a similarity rating between 0 and 1.

    After playing around with it a bit you can figure out what a good metric is for how similar they should be, and use it like this:

    metric = 0.6   # just an example value
if SequenceMatcher(None, str(a), str(b)).ratio() > metric:
    # a and b are similar