SOUNDEX function / in php - how to ?

[siliconmike]

Hi I'm using SOUNDEX mysql function to find similar sounding names from
a table with 2 million distinct names.

Unfortunately there is a single soundex code for every 200,000 names!
Meaning there are only 200,000 distinct codes for 2 million entries.

Is there any other function / library / technique to work around this
immense 1:10 redundancy ?

for example, soundex for 'avis', 'apex' and 'apps' is A120, but I'd
like to differentiate between them in my search - meaning implement a
"stricter" sound comparison than the soundex function offers.

Anything in PHP?

Any pointers would be great


Mike

[Philip Ronan]

Re: SOUNDEX function / in php - how to ?

siliconmike wrote:
[color=blue]
> Hi I'm using SOUNDEX mysql function to find similar sounding names from
> a table with 2 million distinct names.
>
> Unfortunately there is a single soundex code for every 200,000 names!
> Meaning there are only 200,000 distinct codes for 2 million entries.
>
> Is there any other function / library / technique to work around this
> immense 1:10 redundancy ?
>
> for example, soundex for 'avis', 'apex' and 'apps' is A120, but I'd
> like to differentiate between them in my search - meaning implement a
> "stricter" sound comparison than the soundex function offers.
>
> Anything in PHP?[/color]

Soundex is rather clumsy for this purpose. Use metaphone() instead, then use
the levenshtein() function to sort the results based on their similarity to
the search term

--
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http://vzone.virgin.net/phil.ronan/