Any computer science geeks?

[markw at mohawksoft.com (markw at mohawksoft.com)]

While I like to think I'm no slouch in this department, I'd like to see if
anyone has a better idea:

You have two strings and you want to quantify how similar they are.

Levenshtein Distance is not a good choice for two reasons:

(1) it doesn't really show how similar strings are -- really, for instance:

"Tom Lehrer - The Was The Year That Was" and "That Was The Year That Was -
Tom Lehrer"

Are, to you and me, almost identical, but difficult to detect, Levenshtein
only shows how many steps are required to convert one to another.

(2) Levenshtein Distance is an N^2 algorithm and, well, yuck.

Anyone have any ideas? I currently using an n^2 algorithm that scans
through both strings and used run length matching, but if you know of
something better, I'd love to hear it.