An integer linear programming approach for approximate string comparison

Marcus Ritt, Alysson M. Costa, Sergio Mergen and Viviane M. Orengo

European Journal of Operational Research, 2009, vol. 198, issue 3, 706-714

Abstract: We introduce a problem called maximum common characters in blocks (MCCB), which arises in applications of approximate string comparison, particularly in the unification of possibly erroneous textual data coming from different sources. We show that this problem is NP-complete, but can nevertheless be solved satisfactorily using integer linear programming for instances of practical interest. Two integer linear formulations are proposed and compared in terms of their linear relaxations. We also compare the results of the approximate matching with other known measures such as the Levenshtein (edit) distance.

Keywords: Approximate; string; matching; Distance; metric; Block; edits; Block; moves; Integer; programming; Hop; constraints (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:198:y:2009:i:3:p:706-714

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