'\" t
.\" Copyright (c) 2026 Bruce Hill
.\" All rights reserved.
.\"
.TH Text.distance 3 2026-02-08 "Tomo man-pages"
.SH NAME
Text.distance \- distance between two texts
.SH LIBRARY
Tomo Standard Library
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.BI Text.distance\ :\ func(a:\ Text,\ b:\ Text,\ language:\ Text\ =\ "C"\ ->\ Num)
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
Get an approximate distance between two texts, such that when the distance is small, the texts are similar and when the distance is large, the texts are dissimilar.


.SH ARGUMENTS

.TS
allbox;
lb lb lbx lb
l l l l.
Name	Type	Description	Default
a	Text	The first text to compare. 	-
b	Text	The second text to compare. 	-
language	Text	The ISO 639 language code for which character width to use. 	"C"
.TE
.SH RETURN
The distance between the two texts (larger means more dissimilar).

.SH NOTES
The exact distance algorithm is not specified and may be subject to change over time.

.SH EXAMPLES
.EX
assert "hello".distance("hello") == 0
texts := &["goodbye", "hello", "hallo"]
texts.sort(func(a,b:&Text) a.distance("hello") <> b.distance("hello"))
assert texts == ["hello", "hallo", "goodbye"]
.EE
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR Tomo-Text (3)