title: Levenshtein type algorithm with numeric vectors
body: <p>I have two vectors with numeric values. Such as</p>
  
  <pre><code>v1 &lt;- c(1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
  v2 &lt;- c(54, 23, 12, 53, 7, 8)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I would like to compute the number of <strong>insertions</strong>, <strong>deletions</strong> and <strong>replacements</strong> that I need to turn one vector into the other with certain costs per operation <strong>c1</strong> <strong>c2</strong> and <strong>c3</strong> respectively. I am aware that the function <em>adist</em> on the base package does this for strings but I have no knowledge of the equivalent function with numbers. </p>
  
  <p>I thought about referencing each number with a letter but I have more than 2000 unique numbers so if anybody knows how to get 2000 different characters in R that would also be a solution for me.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks for your help.     </p>