Add ratio_min() function to the difflib library

[gi-ba-bu]

BPO	46086
Nosy	@tim-one, @taleinat, @gi-ba-bu
PRs	bpo-46086: Add ratio_min(self,m) function #30125

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = 'https://github.com/tim-one'
closed_at = <Date 2022-01-20.22:15:08.930>
created_at = <Date 2021-12-15.17:37:14.440>
labels = ['type-feature', 'library', '3.11']
title = 'Add ratio_min() function to the difflib library'
updated_at = <Date 2022-01-20.22:15:08.929>
user = 'https://github.com/gi-ba-bu'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2022-01-20.22:15:08.929>
actor = 'taleinat'
assignee = 'tim.peters'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2022-01-20.22:15:08.930>
closer = 'taleinat'
components = ['Library (Lib)']
creation = <Date 2021-12-15.17:37:14.440>
creator = 'gibu'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 46086
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 4.0
messages = ['408622', '408629', '410104', '411048']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['tim.peters', 'taleinat', 'python-dev', 'gibu']
pr_nums = ['30125']
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'rejected'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue46086'
versions = ['Python 3.11']

[gi-ba-bu]

Here I propose a new function, namely .ratio_min(self,m).

.ratio_min(self,m) is an extension of the difflib's function .ratio(self). Equivalently to .ratio(self), .ratio_min(self,m) returns a measure of two sequences' similarity (float in [0,1]). In addition to .ratio(), it can ignore matched substrings if these substrings have length less than a given threshold m. m is the second variable of the function.

It is very useful to avoid spurious high similarity scores.

# NEW FUNCTION: 

    def ratio_min(self,m):
        """Return a measure of the sequences' similarity (float in [0,1]).
        Where T is the total number of elements in both sequences, and
        M_min is the number of matches with every single match has length at least m, this is 2.0*M_min / T.
        Note that this is 1 if the sequences are identical, and 0 if
        they have no substring of length m or more in common.
        .ratio_min() is similar to .ratio(). 
        .ratio_min(1) is equivalent to .ratio().
        
        >>> s = SequenceMatcher(None, "abcd", "bcde")
        >>> s.ratio_min(1)
        0.75
        >>> s.ratio_min(2)
        0.75
        >>> s.ratio_min(3)
        0.75
        >>> s.ratio_min(4)
        0.0
        """

        matches = sum(triple[-1] for triple in self.get_matching_blocks() if triple[-1] >=m)
        return _calculate_ratio(matches, len(self.a) + len(self.b))

[AlexWaygood]

I am removing 3.10 from the "versions" field, since additions to the standard library are only considered for unreleased versions of Python.

[taleinat]

Thanks for the suggestion and the PR, Giacomo!

However, in my opinion, this is better suited to be something like a cookbook recipe. The number of use cases for this will be low, and there would be little advantage to having this in the stdlib rather than elsewhere.

[taleinat]

I'm closing this for now since nobody has followed up and to the best of my understanding this wouldn't be an appropriate addition to the stdlib.

This can be re-opened in the future if needed, of course.