# similar_text

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

similar_text — Calculate the similarity between two strings

### Description

int similar_text ( string `$first` , string `$second` [, float `&$percent` ] )

This calculates the similarity between two strings as described in Oliver [1993]. Note that this implementation does not use a stack as in Oliver's pseudo code, but recursive calls which may or may not speed up the whole process. Note also that the complexity of this algorithm is O(N**3) where N is the length of the longest string.

### Parameters

`first`

  The first string.

`second`

  The second string.

`percent`

  By passing a reference as third argument, similar_text() will calculate the similarity in percent for you.

### Return Values

Returns the number of matching chars in both strings.

### See Also

- levenshtein()
- soundex()