Fuzzy search
Languages and libraries
javascript library
SHOW HN2015
How HN took it
0 positive, 4 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 5 critical, out of 10 comments about the project. Thread score -0.29.
Idea: 0 for, 4 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Simple and clean implementation
From 1 comment
So it's a "string contains string" function in Javascript? I mean, that's great, and this seems like a simple and clean implementation, but is it really worthy of a hacker news…
acbart on HN
Regex explanation of matching algorithm is concise
From 1 comment
Yes good catch. It's going to be a lot slower anyway. Still does a good job at explaining the matching algorithm concisely.
Guillaume86 on HN
Objections
Is just an in-order character subsequence match, not really fuzzy search
From 2 comments
So it's a "string contains string" function in Javascript? I mean, that's great, and this seems like a simple and clean implementation, but is it really worthy of a hacker news…
acbart on HN> In this use case, it's not necessary to figure out how similar strings are, because it's completely irrelevant. I don't follow, since that's pretty much the definition of…
kelseyfrancis on HN
Regex approach breaks on special characters and is slower
From 3 comments
It's only the same as long as your search string doesn't contain any special characters as far as regex is concerned.
mistercow on HNYes good catch. It's going to be a lot slower anyway. Still does a good job at explaining the matching algorithm concisely.
Guillaume86 on HNExcept egrigiously slower https://github.com/bevacqua/fuzzysearch/pull/6#issuecomment-77263900
bevacqua on HN
Does not handle typos or substitutions
From 2 comments
I guess fuzzy search also allows for substitutions like "csrtwheel", but neither you nor the OP does this.
solox3 on HN> In this use case, it's not necessary to figure out how similar strings are, because it's completely irrelevant. I don't follow, since that's pretty much the definition of…
kelseyfrancis on HN
Requests
Support typo tolerance via edit distance
From 1 comment
> In this use case, it's not necessary to figure out how similar strings are, because it's completely irrelevant. I don't follow, since that's pretty much the definition of…
kelseyfrancis on HN
Questions
Why not just use string contains or a regex
From 2 comments
So it's a "string contains string" function in Javascript? I mean, that's great, and this seems like a simple and clean implementation, but is it really worthy of a hacker news…
acbart on HNI think ``` new RegExp("twl".split("").join("(.+)?")).test("cartwheel") ``` does approximately the same, no?
bshimmin on HN
Alternatives named
Damerau-Levenshtein distance implementations
From 1 comment
Yeah, anyone thinking of using this should probably instead just look for an existing implementation of something like the Damerau–Levenshtein distance.
kelseyfrancis on HN
Levenshtein with a BK-Tree
From 1 comment
> In this use case, it's not necessary to figure out how similar strings are, because it's completely irrelevant. I don't follow, since that's pretty much the definition of…
kelseyfrancis on HN