Abs timing

def suggest_alternatives(w):
    """Opens words.txt and returns  a list of possible corrections for word 'w'
    words.txt is the generic word dictionary for linux with a little under 100k words"""
    result = []
    words = get_words('words.txt')
    wordset = set(words)
    start = time.time()
    for word in wordset:
        #if 1 >= len(w) - len(word) >= -1: continue
        #if (len(word) > (len(w)+1)) and (len(word) < (len(w)-1)): continue
        if abs(len(w) - len(word)) > 1: continue
        distance = 0
        distance = levenshtein(w,word)
        if (distance == 1):
            result.append(word)
    print timer(start)
    return result

def levenshtein(s1, s2):
    "Calculates the Levenshtein distance between string 1 and string 2."
    if len(s1) < len(s2):
        return levenshtein(s2, s1)
    if len(s2) == 0:
        return len(s1)
    previous_row = xrange(len(s2) + 1)
    for i, c1 in enumerate(s1):
        current_row = [i + 1]
        for j, c2 in enumerate(s2):
            insertions = previous_row[j + 1] + 1 # j+1 instead of j since previous_row and current_row are one character longer
            deletions = current_row[j] + 1       # than s2
            substitutions = previous_row[j] + (c1 != c2)
            current_row.append(min(insertions, deletions, substitutions))
        previous_row = current_row
    return previous_row[-1]

def timer(s):
    return "Executed in %0.5f" % float(time.time() - s)