Hi folks, Well, there seems to be little interest in the subject. Either that, or I wasn't very clear on what I wanted - or, few people had what to say of instructive on the matter. No matter the case, in case anyone is looking for a solution, here is what I've found: There is, amongst other things, a good article online (a university paper in fact) that is easy to understand, to the point, and free to download from here: http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DS/0112022 (See PostScript or PDF link at bottom) Anyway, based on this very good document, I've written a C# function to compare two strings, and give a percentage on how close the strings are to one another as such: // Found http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.DS/0112022 // July 6, 2004 // From: qi xiao yang // Date (v1): Fri, 21 Dec 2001 05:58:12 GMT (250kb) // Date (revised v2): Tue, 25 Dec 2001 21:29:22 GMT (294kb) // Faster Algorithm of String Comparison // Authors: Qi Xiao Yang, Sung Sam Yuan, Lu Chun, Li Zhao, Sun Peng private double StringCompareValue(string str1, string str2) { string strX, strY; // smaller and bigger of the strings, respectively double val; // return value int window, wPos; // window width and position double SSNC = 0; // value used to calculate return in the end // get smaller & bigger strings sorted out // also, perform lower case conversion if(str1.Length < str2.Length) { strX = str1.ToLower(); strY = str2.ToLower(); } else { strX = str2.ToLower(); strY = str1.ToLower(); } // initialize window = strX.Length; wPos = 0; // while the window exists and the smallest string exists while(window > 0 && strX.Length > 0) { // while the window doesn't overlap the end of the string while((wPos + window) <= strX.Length) { // get string to compare to string comparer = strX.Substring(wPos, window); // start comparison point at zero int cPos = 0; // loop through second string to get all possible comparisons while(cPos + window <= strY.Length) { // if comparisons match if(comparer == strY.Substring(cPos, window)) { // update SSNC Value SSNC += Math.Pow((2 * window), 2); // remove "used characters" strY = strY.Remove(cPos, window); strX = strX.Remove(wPos, window); // force window position to stay same place (moved forward again at end of loop) wPos--;; // continue search with next window position break; } // move right on lon
