# Match by string

### Description
Finds matches between the `STRING`-columns in the inputs.
Various comparison options can be chosen: equals, contains, startsWith, endsWith or edit-distance.
The result provides both the matching items, as well as the items from both inputs that didn't generate a match.

Optional input `Cands [OBJ,OBJ]` can limit the matching to only the pairs of candidates listed.
- The first column corresponds to the first column of `A`.
- The second column corresponds to the first column of `B`.
- Scores are propagated to final matches.

### Input
- `A [OBJ,STRING]`: a list of candidates, in which the `STRING`-column will be used for comparison and the `OBJ`-column will be the result
- `Cands [OBJ,OBJ]` (optional): candidate pairs, only `A`s and `B`s that are in `Cands` will be matched
- `B [OBJ,STRING]`: a list of candidates, in which the `STRING`-column will be used for comparison and the `OBJ`-column will be the result

### Output
- `RESULT [OBJ,OBJ]`: the matched objects from `A` and `B`
- `NOTA [OBJ]`: the objects from A that did not match with an item from `B`
- `NOTB [OBJ]`: the objects from B that did not match with an item from `A`

### Parameters
- `Comparison`: Comparison function to use
  - `equal`: the strings must be equal
  - `contains`: the string in `B` must be contained in `A`
  - `containsWholeWord`: the string in `B` must be contained in `A`, as a whole word (only punctuation/spaces around)
  - `startsWith`: the string in `A` must start with `B`
  - `endsWith`: the string in `A` must end with `B`
  - `prefix`: strings in `A` and `B` share a prefix of a given length
  - `levenshtein`: the string in A may not have more than `Max edit-distance` differences (character insertions or deletions) with B.
  - `jaro-winkler`: the strings in `A` and `B` must have a Jaro-Winkler similarity score not smaller than `Min similarity`.
- `Case-sensitive`: if set to `false`, upper/lower case is ignored
- `Exclude self-matches`: whether to emit the match if the objects in `A` and `B` are the same. Mostly useful when `A` and `B` come from the same source