my statement about the function usefulness was probably too categorical, though I had in mind the current name of the function.
I'm afraid that creating a function that implements quite different algorithms depending on a global parameter seems very hacky and would lead to misunderstandings. I do understand the need of backward compatibility, but I'd opt for the lesser evil. Perhaps a good idea would be to change the name to 'substring_similarity()' and introduce the new function 'word_similarity()' later, for example in the next major version release.
Good point. I've no complaints about that. I'm going to propose corresponding patch to the next commitfest.
------ Alexander Korotkov Postgres Professional: http://www.postgrespro.com The Russian Postgres Company
