A python script to return all lines in the input file in descending order of edit distance from the input string

sort-by-edit-distance.py

from difflib import ndiff
import sys


def distance(str1, str2):
    a = 0
    r = 0

    for x in ndiff(str1, str2):
        if x[0] == "-":
            r += 1
        elif x[0] == "+":
            a += 1

    return max(a, r)


def main():

    infile_path = sys.argv[1]
    str1 = sys.argv[2]

    with open(infile_path, "r") as infile:
        lines = []
        for line in infile:
            lines.append((distance(str1, line), line))

        s_lines = sorted(lines, key=lambda x: x[0], reverse=True)

        print("\n".join([str(l[0]) + ", " + l[1] for l in s_lines]))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()