Getting the closest string match

Question

I need a way to compare multiple strings to a test string and return the string that closely resembles it:

TEST STRING: THE BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE RED COW         


        

Answer 1

The problem is hard to implement if the input data is too large (say millions of strings). I used elastic search to solve this.

Quick start : https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/client/net-api/6.x/elasticsearch-net.html

Just insert all the input data into DB and you can search any string based on any edit distance quickly. Here is a C# snippet which will give you a list of results sorted by edit distance (smaller to higher)

var res = client.Search(s => s
    .Query(q => q
    .Match(m => m
        .Field(f => f.VariableName)
        .Query("SAMPLE QUERY")
        .Fuzziness(Fuzziness.EditDistance(5))
    )
));