Goal: search for a path (sequence of edits) from start to final string, whereby: initial state is the word we are transforming operators: insert, delete, substitute goal state: the word we end up at path cost: cost of the path we are trying to minimize Sequence of all edits is huge! so DP. For two strings, let’s define: X of length n Y of length m we define some D(i,j) as the edit distance between substring X[1:i] and Y[1:j]. Let: D(i,0) = i, \forall i D(0,j) = j, \forall j for i in range(1,M): for j in range(1,N): # deletion: ignoring one char of previous string d1 = D(i-1,j) + 1 # (cost) # insertion: insertion into string before using rest of j d2 = D(i,j-1) + 1 # (cost) # keep same if char is same or substitute current d3 = D(i-1,j-1) + (0 if X[i] == Y[j] else 2) # cache D(i,j) = min(d1, d2, d3)