Hello monks,

I have a first long list (array) of n-grams (array various length, typical: 10.000 elements) and a second even bigger reference list with n-grams (~500.000 elements). I need to check if elements of list 1 are present in list 2. The match must be fuzzy, i.e. both lists are words, and I need to match also very similar words (basically to match singular-plurals, small differences in spellings, and so on). My script (very naive) works, but I'd like to hear from you some suggestions to improve its speed (which is quite crucial in my application). I already had a BIG gain in time switching from Text::Fuzzy::PP to Text::Fuzzy, but surely the script could further improved. Data looks like this (each line is one element of multi word units): 

IP exchange
IPX
Internet Protocol Exchange
DPM
Data Point Model

[download]

My code

use strict;
use warnings;
use Text::Fuzzy;
use Data::Dumper;

my @stringsToMatch=("extra-articular arthrodesis", "malnutritions");#m
+y first list. I want to check if its elements are in my reference lis
+t $referenceNgrams
my @goodmatches;

my $referenceNgrams="EN.txt";#my huge reference file (second list)

print "Loading n-grams from $referenceNgrams\n";
open my $inFH, '<:encoding(UTF-8)', $referenceNgrams or die;
chomp(my @Corpus = <$inFH>);
close $inFH;
        
#Matching with Fuzzy
foreach my $stringToMatch (@stringsToMatch){
    print "Working on $stringToMatch\n";
    foreach my $corpusElement (@Corpus){
        #matching only if $stringToMatch has the same amount of elemen
+ts of $corpusElement (to save time?)
        my $elementsInstringToMatch = 1 + ($stringToMatch =~ tr{ }{ })
+;
        my $elementsIncorpusElement = 1 + ($corpusElement =~ tr{ }{ })
+;
        
        if ($elementsIncorpusElement eq $elementsInstringToMatch){
            my $tf = Text::Fuzzy->new ($stringToMatch);
            my $distance= $tf->distance ($corpusElement);
            if ($distance < 2){#sensibility
                push (@goodmatches, $stringToMatch);
                last;#go out of loop if match has been found
            }
        }
    }
}

print "Good matches:\n";
print Dumper @goodmatches;

[download]

In reply to Improving speed match arrays with fuzzy logic by Takamoto

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