Why does the function levenshtein in PHP have a 255-character limit?

This is the PHP full implementation for the function. As you can see there are nested loop based on string characters length:

function lev($s,$t) {
  $m = strlen($s);
  $n = strlen($t);

  for($i=0;$i<=$m;$i++) $d[$i][0] = $i;
  for($j=0;$j<=$n;$j++) $d[0][$j] = $j;

  for($i=1;$i<=$m;$i++) {
    for($j=1;$j<=$n;$j++) {
      $c = ($s[$i-1] == $t[$j-1])?0:1;
      $d[$i][$j] = min($d[$i-1][$j]+1,$d[$i][$j-1]+1,$d[$i-1][$j-1]+$c);
    }
  }

  return $d[$m][$n];
}

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Algorithm_Implementation/Strings/Levenshtein_distance#PHP

the version for PHP named levenshtein() in PHP starting from version 4.0.1 to 255 chars length.

I think the limitation is introduced to maintain performance and duration in a most acceptable range.

If you need string comparison for lengths > 255, you could use the implementation above.

PHP's levenshtein() function can only handle up to 255 characters, which is not realistic for user input (only the first paragraph of this post has 285 characters). If you choose to use a custom function able to handle more than 255 characters, efficiency is an important issue.

I use this function, specific for this case, but much faster:

function ucase_percent ($str) {
    $str2 = strtolower ($str);

    $l = strlen ($str);
    $ucase = 0;

    for ($i = 0; $i < $l; $i++) {
        if ($str{$i} != $str2{$i}) {
            $ucase++;
        }
    }

    return $ucase / $l * 100.0;
}