Comparing 2 similar strings?

[Jürgen Kahrs]

Hello William,

> 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?

This is a classic problem of computer science.
Watch this:

  http://odur.let.rug.nl/~kleiweg/lev/
  http://www.levenshtein.net/

This solution has application in speech
recognition and also in DNA research.