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go-edlib
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📚 String comparison and edit distance algorithms library, featuring : Levenshtein, LCS, Hamming, Damerau levenshtein (OSA and Adjacent transpositions algorithms), Jaro-Winkler, Cosine, etc...

Last updated Jul 6, 2026
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README

Go-edlib : Edit distance and string comparison library

Coverage Status Go Report Card License: MIT PkgGoDev

Golang string comparison and edit distance algorithms library featuring : Levenshtein, LCS, Hamming, Damerau levenshtein (OSA and Adjacent transpositions algorithms), Jaro-Winkler, Cosine, etc...

Table of Contents


Requirements

  • Go (v1.13+)

Introduction

Golang open-source library which includes most (and soon all) edit-distance and string comparision algorithms with some extra!
Designed to be fully compatible with Unicode characters!
This library is 100% test covered 😁

Features

- OSA (Optimal string alignment) - Adjacent transpositions

Benchmarks

You can check an interactive Google chart with few benchmark cases for all similarity algorithms in this library through StringsSimilarity function here

However, if you want or need more details, you can also viewing benchmark raw output here, which also includes memory allocations and test cases output (similarity result and errors).

If you are on Linux and want to run them on your setup, you can run

./tests/benchmark.sh
script.

Installation

Open bash into your project folder and run:
go get github.com/hbollon/go-edlib

And import it into your project:

import (
	"github.com/hbollon/go-edlib"
)

Run tests

If you are on Linux and want to run all unit tests just run
./tests/tests.sh
script.

For Windows users you can run:

go test ./... # Add desired parameters to this command if you want

Documentation

You can find all the documentation here : Documentation

Examples

Calculate string similarity index between two string

You can use

StringSimilarity(str1, str2, algorithm)
function. algorithm parameter must one of the following constants:
// Algorithm identifiers const ( 	Levenshtein Algorithm = iota 	DamerauLevenshtein 	OSADamerauLevenshtein 	Lcs 	Hamming 	Jaro 	JaroWinkler 	Cosine )

Example with levenshtein:

res, err := edlib.StringsSimilarity("string1", "string2", edlib.Levenshtein) if err != nil {   fmt.Println(err) } else {   fmt.Printf("Similarity: %f", res) }

Execute fuzzy search based on string similarity algorithm

1. Most matching unique result without threshold

You can use

FuzzySearch(str, strList, algorithm)
function.

strList := []string{"test", "tester", "tests", "testers", "testing", "tsting", "sting"}
res, err := edlib.FuzzySearch("testnig", strList, edlib.Levenshtein)
if err != nil {
  fmt.Println(err)
} else {
  fmt.Printf("Result: %s", res)
}
Result: testing

2. Most matching unique result with threshold

You can use

FuzzySearchThreshold(str, strList, minSimilarity, algorithm)
function.

strList := []string{"test", "tester", "tests", "testers", "testing", "tsting", "sting"}
res, err := edlib.FuzzySearchThreshold("testnig", strList, 0.7, edlib.Levenshtein)
if err != nil {
  fmt.Println(err)
} else {
  fmt.Printf("Result for 'testnig': %s", res)
}

res, err = edlib.FuzzySearchThreshold("hello", strList, 0.7, edlib.Levenshtein) if err != nil { fmt.Println(err) } else { fmt.Printf("Result for 'hello': %s", res) }

Result for 'testnig': testing
Result for 'hello':

3. Most matching result set without threshold

You can use

FuzzySearchSet(str, strList, resultQuantity, algorithm)
function.

strList := []string{"test", "tester", "tests", "testers", "testing", "tsting", "sting"}
res, err := edlib.FuzzySearchSet("testnig", strList, 3, edlib.Levenshtein)
if err != nil {
  fmt.Println(err)
} else {
  fmt.Printf("Results: %s", strings.Join(res, ", "))
}
Results: testing, test, tester

4. Most matching result set with threshold

You can use

FuzzySearchSetThreshold(str, strList, resultQuantity, minSimilarity, algorithm)
function.

strList := []string{"test", "tester", "tests", "testers", "testing", "tsting", "sting"}
res, err := edlib.FuzzySearchSetThreshold("testnig", strList, 3, 0.5, edlib.Levenshtein)
if err != nil {
  fmt.Println(err)
} else {
  fmt.Printf("Result for 'testnig' with '0.5' threshold: %s", strings.Join(res, " "))
}

res, err = edlib.FuzzySearchSetThreshold("testnig", strList, 3, 0.7, edlib.Levenshtein) if err != nil { fmt.Println(err) } else { fmt.Printf("Result for 'testnig' with '0.7' threshold: %s", strings.Join(res, " ")) }

Result for 'testnig' with '0.5' threshold: testing test tester
Result for 'testnig' with '0.7' threshold: testing

Get raw edit distance (Levenshtein, LCS, Damerau–Levenshtein, Hamming)

You can use one of the following function to get an edit distance between two strings :

Example with Levenshtein distance:
res := edlib.LevenshteinDistance("kitten", "sitting") fmt.Printf("Result: %d", res)

Result: 3

LCS, LCS Backtrack and LCS Diff

1. Compute LCS(Longuest Common Subsequence) between two strings

You can use

LCS(str1, str2)
function.

lcs := edlib.LCS("ABCD", "ACBAD")
fmt.Printf("Length of their LCS: %d", lcs)
Length of their LCS: 3

2. Backtrack their LCS

You can use

LCSBacktrack(str1, str2)
function.

res, err := edlib.LCSBacktrack("ABCD", "ACBAD")
if err != nil {
  fmt.Println(err)
} else {
  fmt.Printf("LCS: %s", res)
}
LCS: ABD

3. Backtrack all their LCS

You can use

LCSBacktrackAll(str1, str2)
function.

res, err := edlib.LCSBacktrackAll("ABCD", "ACBAD")
if err != nil {
  fmt.Println(err)
} else {
  fmt.Printf("LCS: %s", strings.Join(res, ", "))
}
LCS: ABD, ACD

4. Get LCS Diff between two strings

You can use

LCSDiff(str1, str2)
function.

res, err := edlib.LCSDiff("computer", "houseboat")
if err != nil {
  fmt.Println(err)
} else {
  fmt.Printf("LCS: \n%s\n%s", res[0], res[1])
}
LCS Diff: 
 h c o m p u s e b o a t e r
 + -   - -   + + + + +   - -

Author

👤 Hugo Bollon

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues and feature requests are welcome!
Feel free to check issues page.

Show your support

Give a ⭐️ if this project helped you!

📝 License

Copyright © 2020 Hugo Bollon.
This project is MIT License licensed.

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