NAME

       fstrcmp - fuzzy comparison of strings

SYNOPSIS

       fstrcmp [ -p ] first‐string second‐string
       fstrcmp -w first‐string second‐string
       fstrcmp -a first‐file second‐file
       fstrcmp -s needle haystack...
       fstrcmp --version

DESCRIPTION

       The  fstrcmp  command  is  used  to  make  fuzzy  comparisons  between strings.  The “edit
       distance” between the strings is printed, with 0.0 meaning the  strings  are  utterly  un‐
       alike, and 1.0 meaning the strings are identical.

       You may need to quote the string to insulate them from the shell.

OPTIONS

       The fstrcmp command understands the following options:

       -a

       --files-as-bytes
               This  option  is used to compare two files as arrays of bytes.  See fmemcmp(3) for
               more information.

       -p

       --pair  This option is used to compare two strings  as  arrays  of  bytes.   This  is  the
               default.  See fstrcmp(3) for more information.

       -s

       --select
               This  option  is  used  to  select  the  closest needle from the provided haystack
               alternatives.   The  most  similar  (single)  choice  is  printed.   If  none  are
               particularly  similar,  nothing  is printed.  See fstrcmp(3) for more information.
               See below for example.

       -V

       --version
               This option may be used to print the version of  the  fstrcmp  command,  and  then
               exit.

       -w

       --wide-pair
               This  option is used to compare two multi‐byte character strings.  See fstrcoll(3)
               for more information.

EXIT STATUS

       The fstrcmp command exits with status 1 on any error.  The fstrcmp command only exits with
       status 0 if there are no errors.

EXAMPLE

       The fstrcmp --select option may be used in a shell script to improve error messages.
              case "$action" in
              start)
                  start
                  ;;
              stop)
                  stop
                  ;;
              restart)
                  stop
                  start
                  ;;
              *)
                  echo "$0: action \"$action\" unknown" 1>&2
                  guess=`fstrcmp --select "$action" stop start restart`
                  if [ "$guess" ]
                  then
                      echo "$0: did you mean \"$guess\" instead?" 1>&2
                  fi
                  exit 1
                  ;;
              esac
       Thus,  the  error  message  frequently  suggests  the correct action in the face of simple
       finger problems on the command line.

SEE ALSO

       fstrcmp(3)
               fuzzy comparison of strings

       fstrcoll(3)
               fuzzy comparison of two multi‐byte character strings

       fstrcmpi(3)
               fuzzy comparison of strings, integer variation

COPYRIGHT

       fstrcmp version 0.7
       Copyright (C) 2009 Peter Miller
       Peter Miller <pmiller@opensource.org.au>

       The comparison code is derived from the fuzzy comparison functions in  GNU  Gettext  0.17.
       The GNU Gettext comparison functions were, in turn, derived from GNU Diff 2.7.

       Copyright (C) 1988-2009 Free Software Foundation

                                                                                       fstrcmp(1)