<br><font size=2 face="Courier">Chris,</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="Courier"> There is also an algorithm called 'Metaphone' that was originally</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier">published in Computer Language in 1990. It does a somewhat better job</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier">of matching similar sounding words (at least in English). The principal</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier">weakness of soundex is that it always uses the first letter of the word,</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier">which can often be spelled differently.</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="Courier"> You might also try searches on 'agrep' ("approximate grep") and</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier">'string similarity' and 'approximate string matching' or</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier">'approximate pattern matching' for other references.</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="Courier">Here are a few fairly good references:</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier"> http://www.bitmechanic.com/mail-archives/mysql/Jan1998/0666.html</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier"> http://aspell.net/metaphone/metaphone-kuhn.txt</font>
<br><font size=2 face="Courier"> http://www.dcc.ufmg.br/~ghuiban/paa/tp3/node18.html</font>
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<br><font size=2 face="Courier"> -Dean</font>
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<td><font size=1 face="sans-serif"><b>Chris Muller <afunkyobject@yahoo.com></b></font>
<br><font size=1 face="sans-serif">Sent by: squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org</font>
<p><font size=1 face="sans-serif">08/26/03 12:01 PM</font>
<br><font size=1 face="sans-serif">Please respond to chris; Please respond to The general-purpose Squeak developers list </font>
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<td><font size=1 face="Arial"> </font>
<br><font size=1 face="sans-serif"> To: Squeak List <squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org></font>
<br><font size=1 face="sans-serif"> cc: </font>
<br><font size=1 face="sans-serif"> Subject: Re: Finding and indexing 'similar' string</font></table>
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Jim Menard wrote:<br>
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> How about using the Soundex algorithm? A quick Google search found this <br>
> brief explanation <http://www.frontiernet.net/~rjacob/soundex.htm><br>
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Ohhh! Thank you Jim! What a simple, well-explained method for a sounds-like<br>
index. This would be a great new index type for MagmaCollections..<br>
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Do you know whether it works for other keywords? Or just Surnames? I would<br>
think it would, since some people's surname are regular words anyway..<br>
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- Chris<br>
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