levenshtein function

Applies to: Databricks SQL Databricks Runtime

Returns the Levenshtein distance between the strings str1 and str2.

Syntax

levenshtein(str1, str2 [, maxDistance])

Arguments

• str1: A STRING expression.

• str2: A STRING expression.

• maxDistance: An optional INTEGER expression limiting the maximum Levenshtein distance considered. The default is unlimited.

  Applies to: Databricks SQL Databricks Runtime 13.3 LTS and above

Returns

An INTEGER. If maxDistance is less than the distance between the two strings the function returns -1. If maxDistance is negative the function returns -1.

Examples

SQL

> SELECT levenshtein('kitten', 'sitting');
 3

> SELECT levenshtein('kitten', 'sitting', 2);
 -1

> SELECT levenshtein('kitten', 'sitting', 4);
 3

Related functions