Author: Colin Fay
Date: 2026-05-04

# Getting started

#### Colin Fay

#### 2026-05-04

# Getting started with {tidystringdist}

## About {tidystringdist}

`{tidystringdist}` is a package that extends the {stringdist} package with tidy data principles.

The idea is to perform string distance calculation and combine it with functions for data manipulation and visualisation from the tidyverse framework.

## Installing tidystringdist

You can install the last stable version from GitHub with:

    install.packages("tidystringdist")

Or the dev version from GitHub:

    # install.packages(remotes)
    remotes::install_github("ColinFay/tidystringdist")

## {tidystringdist} basic workflow

## `tidycomb()`

The `tidycomb()` & `tidy_comb_all()` functions return all the possible combinations from a vector / a data.frame and a column / two vectors:

    library(tidystringdist)

    tidy_comb_all(LETTERS[1:3])
    #> # A tibble: 3 × 2
    #>   V1    V2
    #> * <chr> <chr>
    #> 1 A     B
    #> 2 A     C
    #> 3 B     C

    tidy_comb_all(iris, Species)
    #> # A tibble: 3 × 2
    #>   V1         V2
    #> * <chr>      <chr>
    #> 1 setosa     versicolor
    #> 2 setosa     virginica
    #> 3 versicolor virginica

    tidy_comb("Paris", state.name)
    #> # A tibble: 50 × 2
    #>    V1          V2
    #>  * <chr>       <chr>
    #>  1 Alabama     Paris
    #>  2 Alaska      Paris
    #>  3 Arizona     Paris
    #>  4 Arkansas    Paris
    #>  5 California  Paris
    #>  6 Colorado    Paris
    #>  7 Connecticut Paris
    #>  8 Delaware    Paris
    #>  9 Florida     Paris
    #> 10 Georgia     Paris
    #> # ℹ 40 more rows

## Compute string distance

Once you’ve got this data.frame, you can use `tidy_string_dist()` to compute string distance. This function takes a data.frame, the two columns containing the strings, and one or more stringdist methods.

    comb <- tidy_comb_all(state.name)
    tidy_stringdist(comb)
    #> # A tibble: 1,225 × 12
    #>    V1      V2           osa    lv    dl hamming   lcs qgram cosine jaccard    jw
    #>  * <chr>   <chr>      <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>   <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>  <dbl>   <dbl> <dbl>
    #>  1 Alabama Alaska         3     3     3     Inf     5     5  0.216   0.571 0.254
    #>  2 Alabama Arizona        5     5     5       5    10    10  0.581   0.8   0.476
    #>  3 Alabama Arkansas       6     6     6     Inf     9     9  0.440   0.778 0.399
    #>  4 Alabama California     8     8     8     Inf    13    11  0.481   0.818 0.535
    #>  5 Alabama Colorado       6     6     6     Inf    11    11  0.704   0.778 0.488
    #>  6 Alabama Connectic…    11    11    11     Inf    18    18  1       1     1
    #>  7 Alabama Delaware       5     5     5     Inf     9     9  0.440   0.778 0.399
    #>  8 Alabama Florida        5     5     5       5    10    10  0.581   0.8   0.476
    #>  9 Alabama Georgia        6     6     6       6    12    12  0.686   0.909 0.571
    #> 10 Alabama Hawaii         5     5     5     Inf     9     9  0.474   0.875 0.460
    #> # ℹ 1,215 more rows
    #> # ℹ 1 more variable: soundex <dbl>

Default call compute all the methods. You can use specific method with the `method` argument:

    comb <- tidy_comb_all(state.name)
    tidy_stringdist(comb, method = c("osa","jw"))
    #> # A tibble: 1,225 × 4
    #>    V1      V2            osa    jw
    #>  * <chr>   <chr>       <dbl> <dbl>
    #>  1 Alabama Alaska          3 0.254
    #>  2 Alabama Arizona         5 0.476
    #>  3 Alabama Arkansas        6 0.399
    #>  4 Alabama California      8 0.535
    #>  5 Alabama Colorado        6 0.488
    #>  6 Alabama Connecticut    11 1
    #>  7 Alabama Delaware        5 0.399
    #>  8 Alabama Florida         5 0.476
    #>  9 Alabama Georgia         6 0.571
    #> 10 Alabama Hawaii          5 0.460
    #> # ℹ 1,215 more rows