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From: brian@sdcsvax.UUCP (Brian Kantor)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Phonetic Search / Soundex algorithm
Message-ID: <1246@sdcsvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Dec-85 18:05:55 EST
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.1246
Posted: Mon Dec 16 18:05:55 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Dec-85 04:22:33 EST
References: <244@isosvax.UUCP> <43500002@tifsie>
Reply-To: brian@sdcsvax.UUCP (Brian Kantor)
Organization: UCSD wombat breeding society
Lines: 20

>I am interested in obtaining public domain "phonetic search/Soundex"
>algorithms (actual code is preferable).  Any help is welcome.

Donald Knuth's "The Art of Programming, Vol 3: Searching and Sorting"
contains a good explanation of the algorithm, which is easy to
implement.  I've used it on a number of systems, including a
check-approval lookup system.

SOUNDEX gets a number of false hits, since it collapses the range of the
data.  Where I've found it most useful is in partial matches on human
names when no exact match is found - it is good for presenting a list of
possible candidates for further selection.

        Brian Kantor    UCSD Office of Academic Computing
                        Academic Network Operations Group
                        UCSD B-028, La Jolla, CA 92093 (619) 452-6865

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