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https://github.com/lewinfox/levitate

Fuzzy string matching in R. Inspired by Python's thefuzz (but without the Python).
https://github.com/lewinfox/levitate

data-matching fuzzy-matching fuzzywuzzy r similarity-measures string-similarity

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Fuzzy string matching in R. Inspired by Python's thefuzz (but without the Python).

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README 

        
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output: github_document

---



```{r, include=FALSE}

knitr::opts_chunk$set(collapse = TRUE, comment = "#>")

library(levitate)

```



# levitate 



[![](http://cranlogs.r-pkg.org/badges/grand-total/levitate)](https://cran.r-project.org/package=levitate)

[![R-CMD-check](https://github.com/lewinfox/levitate/actions/workflows/R-CMD-check.yaml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/lewinfox/levitate/actions/workflows/R-CMD-check.yaml)



`levitate` is based on the Python [thefuzz](https://github.com/seatgeek/thefuzz) (formerly 

`fuzzywuzzy`) package for fuzzy string matching. An R port of this already exists, but unlike 

[fuzzywuzzyR](https://github.com/mlampros/fuzzywuzzyR), `levitate` is written entirely in R with no

external dependencies on `reticulate` or Python. It also offers a couple of extra bells and whistles

in the form of vectorised functions.



View the docs at https://www.lewinfox.com/levitate/.



## Why "`levitate`"?

A common measure of string similarity is the

[**Lev**enshtein distance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance), and the name was

available on CRAN.



**NOTE** The default distance metric is Optimal String Alignment (OSA), not Levenshtein distance.

This is the default method used by the `stringdist` package, which `levitate` uses for distance

calculations. OSA allows transpositions whereas Levenshtein distance does not. To use Levenshtein

distance pass `method = "lv"` to any `lev_*()` functions.



``` {r transpositions}

lev_distance("01", "10") # Transpositions allowed by the default `method = "osa"`



lev_distance("01", "10", method = "lv") # No transpositions

```



A full list of distance metrics is available in `help("stringdist-metrics", package = stringdist)`.



## Installation



Install the released version from CRAN:



``` r

install.packages("levitate")

```



Alternatively, you can install the development version from Github:



``` r

devtools::install_github("lewinfox/levitate")

```



## Examples



### `lev_distance()`



The edit distance is the number of additions, subtractions or substitutions needed to transform one

string into another. Base R provides the `adist()` function to compute this. `levitate` provides

`lev_distance()` which is powered by the

[`stringdist`](https://github.com/markvanderloo/stringdist) package.



```{r}

lev_distance("cat", "bat")



lev_distance("rat", "rats")



lev_distance("cat", "rats")

```



The function can accept vectorised input. Where the inputs have a `length()` greater than 1 the

results are returned as a vector unless `pairwise = FALSE`, in which case a matrix is returned.

```{r}

lev_distance(c("cat", "dog", "clog"), c("rat", "log", "frog"))



lev_distance(c("cat", "dog", "clog"), c("rat", "log", "frog"), pairwise = FALSE)

```



If at least one (or both) of the inputs is scalar (length 1) the result will be a vector. The

elements of the vector are named based on the longer input (unless `useNames = FALSE`).

```{r}

lev_distance(c("cat", "dog", "clog"), "rat")



lev_distance("cat", c("rat", "log", "frog", "other"))



lev_distance("cat", c("rat", "log", "frog", "other"), useNames = FALSE)

```



### `lev_ratio()`



More useful than the edit distance, `lev_ratio()` makes it easier to compare similarity across

different strings. Identical strings will get a score of 1 and entirely dissimilar strings will get

a score of 0.



This function behaves exactly like `lev_distance()`:



```{r}

lev_ratio("cat", "bat")



lev_ratio("rat", "rats")



lev_ratio("cat", "rats")



lev_ratio(c("cat", "dog", "clog"), c("rat", "log", "frog"))

```



### `lev_partial_ratio()`



If `a` and `b` are different lengths, this function compares all the substrings of the longer string

that are the same length as the shorter string and returns the highest `lev_ratio()` of all of them.

E.g. when comparing `"actor"` and `"tractor"` we would compare `"actor"` with `"tract"`, `"racto"`

and `"actor"` and return the highest score (in this case 1).



```{r}

lev_partial_ratio("actor", "tractor")



# What's actually happening is the max() of this result is being returned

lev_ratio("actor", c("tract", "racto", "actor"))

```



### `lev_token_sort_ratio()`



The inputs are tokenised and the tokens are sorted alphabetically, then the resulting strings are

compared.

```{r}

x <- "Episode IV - Star Wars: A New Hope"

y <- "Star Wars Episode IV - New Hope"



# Because the order of words is different the simple approach gives a low match ratio.

lev_ratio(x, y)



# The sorted token approach ignores word order.

lev_token_sort_ratio(x, y)

```



### `lev_token_set_ratio()`



Similar to `lev_token_sort_ratio()` this function breaks the input down into tokens. It then 

identifies any common tokens between strings and creates three new strings:



```

x <- {common_tokens}

y <- {common_tokens}{remaining_unique_tokens_from_string_a}

z <- {common_tokens}{remaining_unique_tokens_from_string_b}

```

and performs three pairwise `lev_ratio()` calculations between them (`x` vs `y`, `y` vs `z` and `x`

vs `z`). The highest of those three ratios is returned.

```{r}

x <- "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

y <- "my lazy dog was jumped over by a quick brown fox"



lev_ratio(x, y)



lev_token_sort_ratio(x, y)



lev_token_set_ratio(x, y)

```



### `lev_weighted_token_ratio()`



The `lev_weighted_*()` family of functions work slightly differently from the others. They always

tokenise their input, and they allow you to assign different weights to specific tokens. This allows

you to exert some influence over parts of the input strings that are more or less interesting to

you.



For example, maybe you're comparing company names from different sources, trying to match them up.



``` {r weighted-tokens-1}

lev_ratio("united widgets, ltd", "utd widgets, ltd") # Note the typos

```



These strings score quite highly already, but the `"ltd"` in each name isn't very helpful. We can

use `lev_weighted_token_ratio()` to reduce the impact of `"ltd"`.



**NOTE** Because the tokenisation affects the score, we can't compare the output of the 

`lev_weighted_*()` functions with the non-weighted versions. To get a baseline, call the weighted

function without supplying a `weights` argument.



``` {r weighted-tokens-2}

lev_weighted_token_ratio("united widgets, ltd", "utd widgets, ltd")



lev_weighted_token_ratio("united widgets, ltd", "utd widgets, ltd", weights = list(ltd = 0.1))

```



De-weighting `"ltd"` has reduced the similarity score of the strings, which gives a more accurate

impression of their similarity.



We can remove the effect of `"ltd"` altogether by setting its weight to zero.



``` {r weighted-tokens-3}

lev_weighted_token_ratio("united widgets, ltd", "utd widgets, ltd", weights = list(ltd = 0))



lev_weighted_token_ratio("united widgets", "utd widgets")

```



De-weighting also works the other way - if the token to be weighted appears in one string but not

the other, then de-weighting it _increases_ the similarity score:



``` {r weighted-token-4}

lev_weighted_token_ratio("utd widgets", "united widgets, ltd")



lev_weighted_token_ratio("utd widgets", "united widgets, ltd", weights = list(ltd = 0.1))

```



#### Limitations of token weighting



`lev_weighted_token_ratio()` has a key limitation: tokens will only be weighted if:



* The token appears in the same position in both strings (i.e. it's the first/second/third, etc. 

  token in both)

* OR the strings contain different numbers of tokens, and the corresponding token position in the

  other string is empty.

  

This is probably easiest to see by example.



``` {r weighted-token-5}

lev_weighted_token_ratio("utd widgets limited", "united widgets, ltd")

lev_weighted_token_ratio("utd widgets limited", "united widgets, ltd", weights = list(ltd = 0.1, limited = 0.1))

```



In this case the weighting has had no effect. Why not? Internally, the function has tokenised the

strings as follows:



| token_1   | token_2   | token_3   |

|-----------|-----------|-----------|

| "utd"     | "widgets" | "limited" |

| "united"  | "widgets" | "ltd"     |



Because the token `"ltd"` doesn't appear in the same position in both strings, the function doesn't

apply any weights.



This is a deliberate decision; while in the example above it's easy to say "well, clearly ltd and 

limited are the same thing so we ought to weight them", how should we handle a less clear example?



``` {r weighted-token-6}

lev_weighted_token_ratio("green eggs and ham", "spam spam spam spam")

lev_weighted_token_ratio("green eggs and ham", "spam spam spam spam", weights = list(spam = 0.1, eggs = 0.5))

```



In this case it's hard to say what the "correct" approach would be. There isn't a meaningful way of

applying weights to dissimilar tokens. In situations like "ltd"/"limited", a pre-cleaning or

standardisation process might be helpful, but that is outside the scope of what `levitate` offers.



I recommend exploring `lev_weighted_token_sort_ratio()` and `lev_weighted_token_set_ratio()` as

they may give more useful results for some problems. Remember, **weighting is going to be most 

useful when compared to the unweighted output of the same function**.



## Ranking functions



A common problem in this area is "given a string x and a set of strings y, which string in y is most

/ least similar to x?". `levitate` provides two functions to help with this: `lev_score_multiple()` 

and `lev_best_match()`.



`lev_score_multiple()` returns a ranked list of candidates. By default the highest-scoring is first.

 

``` {r score-multiple}

lev_score_multiple("bilbo", c("gandalf", "frodo", "legolas"))

```



`lev_best_match()` returns the best matched string without any score information.



``` {r best-match}

lev_best_match("bilbo", c("gandalf", "frodo", "legolas"))

```



Both functions take a `.fn` argument which allows you to select a different ranking function. The

default is `lev_ratio()` but you can pick another or write your own. See `?lev_score_multiple` for

details.



You can also reverse the direction of sorting by using `decreasing = FALSE`. This reverses the sort

direction so _lower_ scoring items are preferred. This may be helpful if you're using a distance 

rather than a similarity measure, or if you want to return least similar strings.



``` {r best-match-reverse}

lev_score_multiple("bilbo", c("gandalf", "frodo", "legolas"), decreasing = FALSE)

```



## Porting code from `thefuzz` or `fuzzywuzzyR`



Results differ between `levitate` and `thefuzz`, not least because

[`stringdist`](https://github.com/markvanderloo/stringdist) offers several possible similarity

measures. Be careful if you are porting code that relies on hard-coded or learned cutoffs for

similarity measures.