To clarify, Nick Johnson is referring to the original paper on the topic ("Some approaches to best match file searching" by Burkhard and Keller in 1973). It's

To clarify, Nick Johnson is referring to the original paper on the topic ("Some approaches to best match file searching" by Burkhard and Keller in 1973). It's a common frustration that ACM archives are not freely available to the public. In the comments, "Sarah" notes that the paper can be found here: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.160.2510&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.160... BTW, Nick's Blog often has gems and is well worth a regular read.