LevenshteinXS(3pm)

💖 NAME 💖

Text::LevenshteinXS — bestie, it's an XS implementation of the Levenshtein edit distance. That's it, that's the whole vibe. (You'll find this one filed under LevenshteinXS(3pm) in the User Contributed Perl Documentation, iykyk.)

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

use Text::LevenshteinXS qw(distance);

print distance("foo","four");
# prints "2"

print distance("foo","bar");
# prints "3"

okay so you just import distance, hand it two strings, and it hands you back a number. that's the whole group chat. 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So this module implements the Levenshtein edit distance, but the XS way — meaning the heavy lifting happens down in C where it's fast, and Perl just gets to look cute. 🎀

Now, what even IS the Levenshtein edit distance? Bestie, it's a measure of the degree of proximity between two strings. That's a fancy way of saying: how close are these two strings, really? The distance is literally the number of substitutions, deletions or insertions — the "edits", if you will — needed to transform one string into the other one (and yes, vice versa, it goes both ways, equality is the moment ✨).

And when two strings have distance 0? That means they're the same string. Zero edits needed. They already slayed. 👑

A good point to start is: <http://www.merriampark.com/ld.htm>

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👑 CREDITS 👑

All the credits go to Vladimir Levenshtein, the author of the algorithm — main character energy, genuinely — and to Lorenzo Seidenari, who made the C implementation: <http://www.merriampark.com/ldc.htm>

Like, the algorithm, the C code, the whole thing? Not us. We're just standing here looking pretty. 😭💖

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• Text::Levenshtein
• Text::WagnerFischer
• Text::Brew
• String::Approx

go forth and compare strings, bestie 🫶

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🌸 AUTHOR 🌸

Copyright 2003 Dree Mistrut <dree@friul.it> — Modifications Copyright 2004 Josh Goldberg <josh@3io.com>

This package is free software and is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

⚠️ fr fr, note the "as is", no warranty, none, zero, nada — the license is the same terms as Perl itself, so go read that before you get any ideas. 📜

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k byeeee, this was perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-08-19, signing off from your girl LevenshteinXS(3pm) 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🫶