import difflib
a='abcd'
b='ab123'
seq=difflib.SequenceMatcher(a=a.lower(),b=b.lower())
seq=difflib.SequenceMatcher(a,b)
d=seq.ratio()*100
print d
I used the above code but obtained output is 0.0. How can I get a valid answer?
From the docs:
The SequenceMatcher class has this constructor:
class difflib.SequenceMatcher(isjunk=None, a='', b='', autojunk=True)
The problem in your code is that by doing
seq=difflib.SequenceMatcher(a,b)
you are passing a
as value for isjunk
and b
as value for a
, leaving the default ''
value for b
. This results in a ratio of 0.0
.
One way to overcome this (already mentioned by Lennart) is to explicitly pass None
as extra first parameter so all the keyword arguments get assigned the correct values.
However I just found, and wanted to mention another solution, that doesn't touch the isjunk
argument but uses the set_seqs()
method to specify the different sequences.
>>> import difflib
>>> a = 'abcd'
>>> b = 'ab123'
>>> seq = difflib.SequenceMatcher()
>>> seq.set_seqs(a.lower(), b.lower())
>>> d = seq.ratio()*100
>>> print d
44.44444444444444
You forgot the first parameter to SequenceMatcher.
http://docs.python.org/library/difflib.html