Testing for changes on a web page (was: how to find difference in number of characters)

[geremy condra]

On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 10:47 AM, Seebs <usenet-nospam at seebs.net> wrote:
> On 2010-10-09, harryos <oswald.harry at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What I meant by number of characters was the number of edits happened
>> between the two versions..
>
> Consider two strings:
>
> Hello, world!
>
> Yo, there.
>
> What is the "number of edits happened between the two versions"?  It could
> be:
>
> * Zero.  I just typed them both from scratch, no editing occurred between
>  them.
> * Two.  Two words are different.
> * Ten or so -- counting changed characters.
> * Three.  Two words and a punctuation mark are different.
>
> In other words, your problem here is that you haven't actually described
> what you want.  Slow down.  Think!  Describe what you want clearly enough
> that any other person who reads your description can always come up with
> the same answer you would for a given set of inputs.
>
> -s

He mentioned L distance earlier, I'm sure he means 'number of edits'
in that context...

Geremy Condra