private static int limitedCompare()

in src/main/java/org/apache/commons/text/similarity/LevenshteinDistance.java [77:196]


    private static <E> int limitedCompare(SimilarityInput<E> left, SimilarityInput<E> right, final int threshold) { // NOPMD
        if (left == null || right == null) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("CharSequences must not be null");
        }
        if (threshold < 0) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Threshold must not be negative");
        }

        /*
         * This implementation only computes the distance if it's less than or equal to the threshold value, returning -1 if it's greater. The advantage is
         * performance: unbounded distance is O(nm), but a bound of k allows us to reduce it to O(km) time by only computing a diagonal stripe of width 2k + 1
         * of the cost table. It is also possible to use this to compute the unbounded Levenshtein distance by starting the threshold at 1 and doubling each
         * time until the distance is found; this is O(dm), where d is the distance.
         *
         * One subtlety comes from needing to ignore entries on the border of our stripe eg. p[] = |#|#|#|* d[] = *|#|#|#| We must ignore the entry to the left
         * of the leftmost member We must ignore the entry above the rightmost member
         *
         * Another subtlety comes from our stripe running off the matrix if the strings aren't of the same size. Since string s is always swapped to be the
         * shorter of the two, the stripe will always run off to the upper right instead of the lower left of the matrix.
         *
         * As a concrete example, suppose s is of length 5, t is of length 7, and our threshold is 1. In this case we're going to walk a stripe of length 3. The
         * matrix would look like so:
         *
         * <pre> 1 2 3 4 5 1 |#|#| | | | 2 |#|#|#| | | 3 | |#|#|#| | 4 | | |#|#|#| 5 | | | |#|#| 6 | | | | |#| 7 | | | | | | </pre>
         *
         * Note how the stripe leads off the table as there is no possible way to turn a string of length 5 into one of length 7 in edit distance of 1.
         *
         * Additionally, this implementation decreases memory usage by using two single-dimensional arrays and swapping them back and forth instead of
         * allocating an entire n by m matrix. This requires a few minor changes, such as immediately returning when it's detected that the stripe has run off
         * the matrix and initially filling the arrays with large values so that entries we don't compute are ignored.
         *
         * See Algorithms on Strings, Trees and Sequences by Dan Gusfield for some discussion.
         */

        int n = left.length(); // length of left
        int m = right.length(); // length of right

        // if one string is empty, the edit distance is necessarily the length
        // of the other
        if (n == 0) {
            return m <= threshold ? m : -1;
        }
        if (m == 0) {
            return n <= threshold ? n : -1;
        }

        if (n > m) {
            // swap the two strings to consume less memory
            final SimilarityInput<E> tmp = left;
            left = right;
            right = tmp;
            n = m;
            m = right.length();
        }

        // the edit distance cannot be less than the length difference
        if (m - n > threshold) {
            return -1;
        }

        int[] p = new int[n + 1]; // 'previous' cost array, horizontally
        int[] d = new int[n + 1]; // cost array, horizontally
        int[] tempD; // placeholder to assist in swapping p and d

        // fill in starting table values
        final int boundary = Math.min(n, threshold) + 1;
        for (int i = 0; i < boundary; i++) {
            p[i] = i;
        }
        // these fills ensure that the value above the rightmost entry of our
        // stripe will be ignored in following loop iterations
        Arrays.fill(p, boundary, p.length, Integer.MAX_VALUE);
        Arrays.fill(d, Integer.MAX_VALUE);

        // iterates through t
        for (int j = 1; j <= m; j++) {
            final E rightJ = right.at(j - 1); // jth character of right
            d[0] = j;

            // compute stripe indices, constrain to array size
            final int min = Math.max(1, j - threshold);
            final int max = j > Integer.MAX_VALUE - threshold ? n : Math.min(n, j + threshold);

            // ignore entry left of leftmost
            if (min > 1) {
                d[min - 1] = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
            }

            int lowerBound = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
            // iterates through [min, max] in s
            for (int i = min; i <= max; i++) {
                if (left.at(i - 1).equals(rightJ)) {
                    // diagonally left and up
                    d[i] = p[i - 1];
                } else {
                    // 1 + minimum of cell to the left, to the top, diagonally
                    // left and up
                    d[i] = 1 + Math.min(Math.min(d[i - 1], p[i]), p[i - 1]);
                }
                lowerBound = Math.min(lowerBound, d[i]);
            }
            // if the lower bound is greater than the threshold, then exit early
            if (lowerBound > threshold) {
                return -1;
            }

            // copy current distance counts to 'previous row' distance counts
            tempD = p;
            p = d;
            d = tempD;
        }

        // if p[n] is greater than the threshold, there's no guarantee on it
        // being the correct
        // distance
        if (p[n] <= threshold) {
            return p[n];
        }
        return -1;
    }