Percentage matching of text

[Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes]

Bruce Eckel <BruceEckel at MailBlocks.com>
wrote on Fri, 30 Jul 2004 07:52:39 -0600:
> Background: for the 4th edition of Thinking in Java, I'm trying to
> once again improve the testing scheme for the examples in the book. I
> want to verify that the output I show in the book is "reasonably
> correct." I say "Reasonably" because a number of examples produce
> random numbers or text or the time of day or in general things that do
> not repeat themselves from one execution to the next. So, much of the
> text will be the same between the "control sample" and the "test
> sample," but some of it will be different.
>
> I will be using Python or Jython for the test framework.
>
> What I'd like to do is find an algorithm that produces the results of
> a text comparison as a percentage-match. Thus I would be able to
> assert that my test samples must match the control sample by at least
> (for example) 83% for the test to pass. Clearly, this wouldn't be a
> perfect test but it would help flag problems, which is primarily what
> I need.
>
> Does anyone know of an algorithm or library that would do this? Thanks
> in advance.

  Here's an outside-the-box solution: set the random number seed and use
a fixed date in your tests.  Now you can test fixed values, even though
the application is "random".

-- 
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"Virtues foster one another; so too, vices.
 Bad English kills trees, consumes energy, and befouls the Earth.
 Good English renews it." -The Underground Grammarian, v1n2