pairwise not working with StringDistances

[simonschoelly]

In the following example, the pairwise function from Distances.jl does not work.

Versions:
* Julia: 1.5.1
* Distances: 0.9.2
* StringDistances: 0.8.0

julia> using Distances, StringDistances

julia> pairwise(Jaro(), ["hello" "world"])
ERROR: MethodError: result_type(::Jaro, ::Array{String,2}, ::Array{String,2}) is ambiguous. Candidates:
  result_type(dist::PreMetric, a::AbstractArray, b::AbstractArray) in Distances at /home/simon/.julia/packages/Distances/1CdE2/src/generic.jl:36
  result_type(dist::Union{DamerauLevenshtein, Jaro, Levenshtein, RatcliffObershelp, StringDistances.QGramDistance, StringDistances.Normalize, Partial, TokenMax, TokenSet, TokenSort, Winkler}, s1, s2) in StringDistances at /home/simon/.julia/packages/StringDistances/67cTd/src/StringDistances.jl:12
Possible fix, define
  result_type(::Union{DamerauLevenshtein, Jaro, Levenshtein, RatcliffObershelp, StringDistances.QGramDistance, StringDistances.Normalize, Partial, TokenMax, TokenSet, TokenSort, Winkler}, ::AbstractArray, ::AbstractArray)
Stacktrace:
 [1] pairwise(::Jaro, ::Array{String,2}; dims::Nothing) at /home/simon/.julia/packages/Distances/1CdE2/src/generic.jl:212
 [2] pairwise(::Jaro, ::Array{String,2}) at /home/simon/.julia/packages/Distances/1CdE2/src/generic.jl:209
 [3] top-level scope at REPL[7]:1

I suspect that the reason for this ambiguity is making StringDistance a union, see #19

[matthieugomez]

The latest version of StringDistances is 0.10, and the problem does not appear with this version (reopen if not).

[simonschoelly]

Something weird going on here, I can manually add Version v0.10.0, but as soon as I do ]Pkg up, Julia downgrades this package to v0.8.0 again.

Anyway, I created a new Project to check this out and I can still reproduce the problem with versions v0.10.0 of StringDistances:

(Test) pkg> add Distances, StringDistances
   Updating registry at `~/.julia/registries/General`
   Updating git-repo `git://github.com/JuliaRegistries/General.git`
  Resolving package versions...
Updating `~/Desktop/Test/Project.toml`
  [b4f34e82] + Distances v0.10.0
  [88034a9c] + StringDistances v0.10.0
Updating `~/Desktop/Test/Manifest.toml`
  [b4f34e82] + Distances v0.10.0
  [88034a9c] + StringDistances v0.10.0
  [8f399da3] + Libdl
  [37e2e46d] + LinearAlgebra
  [9a3f8284] + Random
  [9e88b42a] + Serialization
  [2f01184e] + SparseArrays
  [10745b16] + Statistics

julia> using Distances, StringDistances

julia> pairwise(Jaro(), ["hello" "world"])
ERROR: MethodError: result_type(::Jaro, ::Array{String,2}, ::Array{String,2}) is ambiguous. Candidates:
  result_type(dist::PreMetric, a::AbstractArray, b::AbstractArray) in Distances at /home/simon/.julia/packages/Distances/d9gO5/src/generic.jl:36
  result_type(dist::Union{Jaro, RatcliffObershelp, JaroWinkler, QGramDistance, DamerauLevenshtein, StringDistances.Hamming, Levenshtein, StringDistances.Normalized, Partial, TokenMax, TokenSet, TokenSort}, s1, s2) in StringDistances at /home/simon/.julia/packages/StringDistances/LqX4j/src/StringDistances.jl:14
Possible fix, define
  result_type(::Union{Jaro, RatcliffObershelp, JaroWinkler, QGramDistance, DamerauLevenshtein, StringDistances.Hamming, Levenshtein, StringDistances.Normalized, Partial, TokenMax, TokenSet, TokenSort}, ::AbstractArray, ::AbstractArray)
Stacktrace:
 [1] pairwise(::Jaro, ::Array{String,2}; dims::Nothing) at /home/simon/.julia/packages/Distances/d9gO5/src/generic.jl:212
 [2] pairwise(::Jaro, ::Array{String,2}) at /home/simon/.julia/packages/Distances/d9gO5/src/generic.jl:209
 [3] top-level scope at REPL[4]:1

[matthieugomez]

Ok, it does not happen with the dev version of Distances. In any case, I think what you want to do is pairwise(Jaro(), ["hello", "world"])