strgroup 1.0.5 released

[Julian Reif]

The Stata command strgroup is updated to version 1.0.5 with a 4.5x performance improvement. Install with:

                                                                                                                                             
net install strgroup, from("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/reifjulian/strgroup/master") replace

strgroup performs fuzzy string matching using the Levenshtein edit distance. It groups similar strings based on a user-specified similarity threshold, which is useful for identifying potential matches between datasets that don't merge cleanly due to typos, abbreviations, or other inconsistencies. Detailed documentation is available on https://github.com/reifjulian/strgroup. Syntax and usage instructions can be accessed directly in Stata by typing help strgroup at the command prompt.

Example: Identify potential matches between two datasets that didn't merge.

sysuse auto, clear
tempfile t
keep make price
replace make = make + "a" in 5
save "`t'"

sysuse auto, clear
keep make
merge 1:1 make using "`t'"
strgroup make if _merge!=3, gen(group) threshold(0.25)
list make group if _merge!=3

       +-------------------------------+
       | make                    group |
       |-------------------------------|
    5. | Buick Electra 225a          1 |
   79. | Buick Electra 225           1 |
       +-------------------------------+
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