## Edit Distance Match Finder ``` /* This match finder leverages techniques used in file comparison algorithms * to find matches between a dictionary and a source file. * * The original motivation for studying this approach was to try and optimize * Zstandard for the use case of patching: the most common scenario being * updating an existing software package with the next version. When patching, * the difference between the old version of the package and the new version * is generally tiny (most of the new file will be identical to * the old one). In more technical terms, the edit distance (the minimal number * of changes required to take one sequence of bytes to another) between the * files would be small relative to the size of the file. * * Various 'diffing' algorithms utilize this notion of edit distance and * the corresponding concept of a minimal edit script between two * sequences to identify the regions within two files where they differ. * The core algorithm used in this match finder is described in: * * "An O(ND) Difference Algorithm and its Variations", Eugene W. Myers, * Algorithmica Vol. 1, 1986, pp. 251-266, * . * * Additional algorithmic heuristics for speed improvement have also been included. * These we inspired from implementations of various regular and binary diffing * algorithms such as GNU diff, bsdiff, and Xdelta. * * Note: after some experimentation, this approach proved to not provide enough * utility to justify the additional CPU used in finding matches. The one area * where this approach consistently outperforms Zstandard even on level 19 is * when compressing small files (<10 KB) using an equally small dictionary that * is very similar to the source file. For the use case that this was intended, * (large similar files) this approach by itself took 5-10X longer than zstd-19 and * generally resulted in 2-3X larger files. The core advantage that zstd-19 has * over this approach for match finding is the overlapping matches. This approach * cannot find any. * * I'm leaving this in the contrib section in case this ever becomes interesting * to explore again. * */ ```