Dne 29.4.2013 03:07, Erik Erlandson napsal(a):
I have been wondering if these distance functions should be specifically part of string algorithms, or more general algorithms.
For example, edit distance is really a function on any two sequences, not just sequences of characters. Rather like std::sort() is an algorithm that can be applied to a sequence of any kind of object.
Well, I depends on the distance itself. Hamming, Levenstein and their relatives can be used with any kind of object (as long as it implements proper == operator). To compute Delta and Gamma distances I must be able to compute distance between two non-equal objects. This is easy for characters, but may not be so easy for "regular" objects. I'm not sure about Jaro and Jaro-Winkler distances right now, but I believe it is the same case as Hamming distance -- generalization should be possible. Hope this answers your question. Jan Strnad