This paper presents a unique and formal method of quantifying the similarity or distance between sedimentary facies successions from measured sections in outcrop or drilled wells and demonstrates its first application in inverse stratigraphic modeling. A sedimentary facies succession is represented with a string of symbols, or facies codes in its natural vertical order, in which each symbol brings with it one attribute such as thickness for the facies. These strings are called attributed strings. A similarity measure is defined between the attributed strings based on a syntactic pattern-recognition technique. A dynamic programming algorithm is used to calculate the similarity. Inverse stratigraphic modeling aims to generate quantitative 3D facies models based on forward stratigraphic modeling that honors observed datasets. One of the key techniques in inverse stratigraphic modeling is how to quantify the similarity or distance between simulated and observed sedimentary facies successions at data locations in order for the forward model to condition the simulation results to the observed dataset such as measured sections or drilled wells. This quantification technique comparing sedimentary successions is demonstrated in the form of a cost function based on the defined distance in our inverse stratigraphic modeling implemented with forward modeling optimization.