Problem 93. Calculate the Levenshtein distance between two strings

This problem description is lifted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance.
The Levenshtein distance between two strings is defined as the minimum number of edits needed to transform one string into the other, with the allowable edit operations being insertion, deletion, or substitution of a single character.
For example, the Levenshtein distance between "kitten" and "sitting" is 3, since the following three edits change one into the other, and there is no way to do it with fewer than three edits:
kitten => sitten (substitution of 's' for 'k')
sitten => sittin (substitution of 'e' for 'i')
sittin => sitting (insert 'g' at the end).
So when
s1 = 'kitten'
and
s2 = 'sitting'
then the distance d is equal to 3.
Solve

Solution Stats

64.05% Correct | 35.95% Incorrect
Last Solution submitted on Jun 13, 2025

Problem Comments

Solution Comments

Show comments

Problem Recent Solvers1472

Suggested Problems

More from this Author96

Problem Tags

matlab string metric

Community Treasure Hunt

Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!

Start Hunting!