#!/usr/bin/env python

# This is a straightforward implementation of a well-known algorithm, and thus
# probably shouldn't be covered by copyright to begin with. But in case it is,
# the author (Magnus Lie Hetland) has, to the extent possible under law,
# dedicated all copyright and related and neighboring rights to this software
# to the public domain worldwide, by distributing it under the CC0 license,
# version 1.0. This software is distributed without any warranty. For more
# information, see <http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0>


def levenshtein(a,b):
    "Calculates the Levenshtein distance between a and b."
    n, m = len(a), len(b)
    if n > m:
        # Make sure n <= m, to use O(min(n,m)) space
        a,b = b,a
        n,m = m,n
        
    current = range(n+1)
    for i in range(1,m+1):
        previous, current = current, [i]+[0]*n
        for j in range(1,n+1):
            add, delete = previous[j]+1, current[j-1]+1
            change = previous[j-1]
            if a[j-1] != b[i-1]:
                change = change + 1
            current[j] = min(add, delete, change)
            
    return current[n]

if __name__=="__main__":
    from sys import argv
    print levenshtein(argv[1],argv[2])
