Re: What is fuzzy matching?

On Fri, Apr 30, 2021 at 5:10 AM Yegappan Lakshmanan <yegappanl@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Tony,
>
> On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 3:07 AM Tony Mechelynck
> <antoine.mechelynck@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The help for :vimgrep (in quickfix.txt with "Last change: 2021 Feb
> > 05", maybe that date is in error) now mentions an [f] flag without
> > saying what it does. One recent vim_dev thread makes me think that
> > with the 'f' flag "fuzzy matching" is used. So I used :helpgrep
> > \<fuzzy\> and found several mentions of fuzzy matching, but AFAICT
> > they all assume that the reader knows what fuzzy matching is. Nowhere
> > did I see the expression defined. So what is fuzzy matching?
> >
>
> We should add a description for "fuzzy matching" to the Vim help.
> I will send out a PR.
>
> Fuzzy matching refers to matching strings using non-exact matches.
> For example, when you search for the 'get pat' string using fuzzy
> matching, it will match the strings 'GetPattern', 'PatternGet',
> 'getPattern', 'patGetter', 'getSomePattern', 'MatchpatternGet' etc.
>
> :echo matchfuzzy(['GetPattern', 'PatternGet', 'getPattern',
> 'patGetter', 'getSomePattern', 'MatchpatternGet'], 'get pat')
> ['patGetter', 'GetPattern', 'PatternGet', 'getPattern',
> 'getSomePattern', 'MatchpatternGet']
>
> Fuzzy matching will match a string, if all the characters in the search
> string are present in the string in the same order. Case is ignored during
> the search. Other characters can be present between two characters
> in the search string. If the search string has multiple words, then each word
> is matched separately. So the words in the search string can be present in
> any order in a string.
>
> Fuzzy matching assigns a score for each match based on some criteria.
> The match with the highest score is returned first.
>
> Regards,
> Yegappan

Ah I see. So IIUC Vim's fuzzy matching will match (caselessly) if
there is an extra letter but not if there is a missing letter, and it
won't match swapped letters: if the search string is 'word', then Vim
will find 'WoRd' or 'worrd' but not 'wrd' or 'wrod'. Thanks for
explaining.

Best regards,
Tony.

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