METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR COST COMPUTATION OF SPELLING SUGGESTIONS AND AUTOMATIC REPLACEMENT

Suggestions may be ordered by their associated costs so that the best suggestions may be displayed to the user and so that, in certain instances, a misspelled word entered by the user may be automatically replaced with a suggestion. To begin generating suggestions and costs, the user input and dictionary word (path of a trie) are considered in parallel. State variables are maintained such as the current cost of the dictionary word and the number of letter positions that have gone unmatched up to the current pointer position, also referred to as the offset. If the offset is zero and the next letters match, the cost associated with the dictionary word is maintained equal to zero. However, if the offset is zero and the next letters of the user input and the dictionary word do not match, then a cost for the dictionary word may not yet be determined. Otherwise, if the offset is greater than zero, possible paths in the trie and associated costs for the paths are determined. If a cost or multiple costs are determined, then the cost(s) is applied to the dictionary word, the offset is set to zero, and the matching process continues. If a cost can not be determined, then the offset is incremented by one and the matching process continues. Dictionary words (paths) are eliminated from consideration when their associated costs become too high. At the end of the matching method, the dictionary word (path) with the lowest cost is typically the best suggestion to replace the misspelled word.