Approximate string matching, also known as fuzzy string matching, is a concept in computer science where the goal is to find strings that match a given pattern approximately rather than exactly. This technique is useful in situations where data may contain errors or inconsistencies, such as typos in text, variations in naming conventions, or differences in data formats.

• Text mining and information retrieval
• Spelling correction systems
• Computational biology and genomics
• Data cleaning in databases
• Natural language processing
• Forensic science
• Music recognition
• Plagiarism detection

For example, a search engine using approximate string matching could return results for a query that contains misspelled words, such as ‘hotel’ instead of ‘hotle’.

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