fstrcmp

[Peter Miller <pmiller@opensource.org.au>]

I've been considering turning my fuzzy string compare function into a
library.

        /**
         * the fstrcmp function compare two strings, to determine how
         * similar two strings appear.
         *
         * @param s1
         *     The first of the strings to compare.
         * @param s2
         *     The second of the strings to compare.
         * @returns
         *     a number between 0.0 and 1.0; 0.0 means the strings are
         *     nothing alike, 1.0 means the two strings are identical.
         */
        double fstrcmp(const char *s1, const char *s2);

I've been using it for over 15 years, and the side effects are pretty
addictive.

My immediate motivation is that apt-get is driving me crazy.
Wouldn't it be great if when you typed

    apt-get build-deps gcc

instead of saying

    E: Invalid operation build-deps

it said something more useful, like

    E: Invalid operation build-deps, did you mean build-dep instead?

This goes for packages as well.  Wouldn't it be great if

    apt-get install dns-utils

instead of saying

    E: Couldn't find package dns-utils

it said something more useful, like

    E: Couldn't find package dns-utils, did you mean dnsutils instead?


Both of these things are possible with fstrcmp.

fstrcmp would have some interesting friends in the same library,
like
        double fstrcasecmp(constr char *s1, const char *s2);
        double fmemcmp(const void *d1, size_t sz1, const void *d2,
        size_t sz2);
        double fobjcmp(const void *d1, size_t sz1, const void *d2,
        size_t sz2, int (*cmp)(const void *o1, const void *o2), size_t
        objsize);
        

There are obvious benefits for compiler error messages, too.  (I have
written compilers using it, number of secondary errors plummet.)

The gettext tools use fstrcmp.

And think home much better bash could be!

        $ aptget install dnsutils
        bash: aptget: command not found, did you mean apt-get instead?
        $

But first I need fstrcmp in a library.  Do I make a fstrcmp its own
library, or do I contribute it to an existing project and which one?

-- 
Regards
Peter Miller <pmiller@opensource.org.au>
/\/\*        http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~millerp/

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