lucene/suggest/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/spell/StringDistance.java

/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.lucene.search.spell;

/**
 * Interface for string distances.
 */
public interface StringDistance {

  /**
   * Returns a float between 0 and 1 based on how similar the specified strings are to one another.  
   * Returning a value of 1 means the specified strings are identical and 0 means the
   * string are maximally different.
   * @param s1 The first string.
   * @param s2 The second string.
   * @return a float between 0 and 1 based on how similar the specified strings are to one another.
   */
  public float getDistance(String s1,String s2);
  
}