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Martinsos / edlib

Lightweight, super fast C/C++ (& Python) library for sequence alignment using edit (Levenshtein) distance.
http://martinsos.github.io/edlib
MIT License
492 stars 162 forks source link

What do SHW and HW stand for? #177

Closed hgibling closed 3 years ago

hgibling commented 3 years ago

I'm assuming the NW for global alignment mode stands for Needleman-Wunsch, but what do SHW and HW stand for? Perhaps Hirschberg for H?

Martinsos commented 3 years ago

Good question :)! Actually those names are from the very start of this project, and H came from "Hybrid" -> Hybrid Wunsch. Looking at it in hindsight, it does not seem like the best name :D, but there we are. SHW is for Semi Hybrid Wunsch. I actually prefer calling them "global", "infix" and "prefix" because I think those describe what they do the best, but NW, SHW and HW names are still very present in the project.

Martinsos commented 3 years ago

I just added FAQ at the end of the README explaining NW, SHW and HW! Closing this issue, but feel free to ask more about this or share your experiences/thoughts.

hgibling commented 3 years ago

Thanks! Appreciate the response :)