Levenshtein?

[jiblett1000]

Hello,

So i understand levenshtein is a string comparison algorithm of sorts, but not really sure how it benefits zxcvbn at all. This could perhaps be a good addition to the docs for all the uninformed (such as myself) out there. In short; Why would I enable a feature if I have no clue what it does in the context of zxcvbn. Any insight is appreciated!

• Cheers!

[MrWook]

Seems reasonable and i will add it to the docs.

The levenshtein implementation compares two strings with each other and gives a the number of differences back. For example
password vs passwrd. With this example we got a levenshtein distance of 1 which basically means there is a difference of 1 character between both string.
This is not limited to missing characters. It also checks for additional or different characters like passwword or passworf.

In the context of zxcvbn it will improve the algorithm too find entries in a dictionary as it not only tries to find equals matches like password === password but also string with a difference of 2, in the default configuration.
This means with the levenshtein option active it is more likely that a password is found in a dictionary.

[jiblett1000]

Thanks for the explanation @MrWook . That' clears things up a bit for me. Hopefully it will help others as well. I appreciate it :)