http://lucene.apache.org/lucene-parent/lucene-suggest: Lucene Suggest Module (The Apache Software Foundation) 
/*
 * 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
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package org.apache.lucene.search.spell;


Interface for string distances.

/**
 * 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.

Params:
  • s1 – The first string.
  • s2 – The second string.
Returns:a float between 0 and 1 based on how similar the specified strings are to one another.
/**
   * 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);
  
}