startsWithSimilarity method

double startsWithSimilarity(String other)

Compares the starting charcters of the String with that of other, limiting the comparison to a substring of this or other that is the shorter of this.length or other.length.

The two strings are converted to lower-case and trimmed for the comparison.

• returns 1.0 if the two strings are the same;
• returns 0.0 if the two strings do not start with the same character;
• returns 0.0 if either of the strings are empty, unless both are empty (equal);
• returns the edit distance between the starting characters in all other cases.

Not case sensitive.

Implementation

double startsWithSimilarity(String other) {
  final term = toLowerCase().trim();
  other = other.toLowerCase().trim();
  if (term == other) {
    return 1.0;
  }
  if (term.isEmpty ||
      other.isEmpty ||
      !other.startsWith(term.substring(0, 1))) {
    return 0.0;
  }
  final startsWithLength = term.length > other.length ? other.length : length;
  return term
      .substring(0, startsWithLength)
      .editSimilarity(other.substring(0, startsWithLength));
}