author: jose_at_monkey.org

license: 3-clause BSD.

$ jmatch -h
Usage: jmatch [-HLins] -d dist needle file1 [...]
search for matching text using fuzzy rules.
        -H      use the Hamming distance algorithm
        -L      use the Levenshtein distance algorithm
        -i      case insensitive search
        -n      print line numbers of matching files
        -s      print the final distance score
        -d      maximum distance allowed for match

$ jmatch -Lnis -d 5 "begin 664" /home/jose/monkey-spam*
/home/jose/monkey-spam-2.mbox:593107:5:beginning
/home/jose/monkey-spam-2.mbox:600298:5:beg
/home/jose/monkey-spam-2.mbox:994278:5:being,
/home/jose/monkey-spam-2.mbox:1169258:5:ve in
/home/jose/monkey-spam-2.mbox:1486415:5:erin
/home/jose/monkey-spam-2.mbox:1488703:5:been

1. whitespace matters, the match is done against the whole line.
2. you'll often wind up with more than you expected.
3. be aware of how the algorithms work. the Levenshtein distance is computed with equal costs of conversions or insertions of characters. the Hamming distance can only be computed if the "needle" is the same length as the line being tested.

requirements

jmatch requires libdistance to build.

to do

• more algorithms: needleman-wunsch, jaccard, etc ...

installation

1. download
2. unpack
3. modify Makefile (or GNUmakefile) to point to the correct libdistance location (to find libdistance.a and distance.h)
4. make (or gmake)

jmatch-0.2.0.tar.gz (1 jan 2005)
preliminary release.

related software

• The Protocol Informatics Project by Marshall Beddoe
• agrep from the University of Arizona