Comparing 2 similar strings?

[Aahz]

[trimmed to c.l.py]

In article <24a6d$428b9c10$d1b717f8$2300 at PRIMUS.CA>,
William Park  <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
>How do you compare 2 strings, and determine how much they are "close" to
>each other?  Eg.
>    aqwerty
>    qwertyb
>are similar to each other, except for first/last char.  But, how do I
>quantify that?
>
>I guess you can say for the above 2 strings that
>    - at max, 6 chars out of 7 are same sequence --> 85% max
>
>But, for
>    qawerty
>    qwerbty
>max correlation is
>    - 3 chars out of 7 are the same sequence --> 42% max

difflib -- use the string as the sequence
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"And if that makes me an elitist...I couldn't be happier."  --JMS