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Edit Distance Rows

Compare prefixes with insertion, deletion and substitution

Your experiment

distance(a, b) returns the fewest single-character insertions, deletions and substitutions turning a into b. Keep only the previous row and the current row.

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What to look for

Each cell compares two prefixes. Above means delete, left means insert, and the diagonal means match or substitute. Two rows are enough because older rows are never read again.

Watch your code work

Ready to experiment

Write a solution or load the worked answer, then choose Trace & check.

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