org.apache.commons.text.similarity

Interface SimilarityScore<R>

Type Parameters:

R - The type of similarity score unit used by this EditDistance.

All Known Subinterfaces:

EditDistance<R>

All Known Implementing Classes:

CosineDistance, HammingDistance, JaccardDistance, JaccardSimilarity, JaroWinklerDistance, LevenshteinDetailedDistance, LevenshteinDistance, LongestCommonSubsequence, LongestCommonSubsequenceDistance

public interface SimilarityScore<R>

Interface for the concept of a string similarity score.

A string similarity score is intended to have some of the properties of a metric, yet allowing for exceptions, namely the Jaro-Winkler similarity score.

We Define a SimilarityScore to be a function d: [X * X] -> [0, INFINITY) with the following properties:

• d(x,y) >= 0, non-negativity or separation axiom
• d(x,y) == d(y,x), symmetry.

Notice, these are two of the properties that contribute to d being a metric.

Further, this intended to be BiFunction<CharSequence, CharSequence, R>. The apply method accepts a pair of CharSequence parameters and returns an R type similarity score. We have ommitted the explicit statement of extending BiFunction due to it only being implemented in Java 1.8, and we wish to maintain Java 1.7 compatibility.

Since:

1.0

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
R	apply(CharSequence left, CharSequence right) Compares two CharSequences.

Method Detail

apply

R apply(CharSequence left,
        CharSequence right)

Compares two CharSequences.

Parameters:

left - the first CharSequence

right - the second CharSequence

Returns:

the similarity score between two CharSequences