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]

siliconmike wrote:

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?

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

--
phil [dot] ronan @ virgin [dot] net
http://vzone.virgin.net/phil.ronan/