Julian Fitzell wrote:
> Jim Menard wrote:
> > It works for any words because it is based on how they sound. I
> > have read about one problem with the algorithm, though: you need
> > different sets of characters and weightings for different
> > languages. For example, I think you would want "j" and "h" to map
> > to the same sound in Mexican Spanish. (Forgive me if that's a bad
> > example. The only Spanish I've ever learned was "May I have another
> > beer, please?" and "Where is the bathroom?")

> The other problem with it, as I recall, is that you the first letter 
> needs to be the same.  So a name/word that starts with 'ph' won't
> ever match a word that starts with 'f', for example, even if they
> sound the same.  Other than that, though, it works great: we used it
> for a sales system and it allowed users to stop asking people to
> spell their names over the phone.  I've tried typing in every
> convoluted spelling of my name I can think of and it always finds >me
:)

There is also the metaphone algorithm, which may or may not have these
same problems:
http://aspell.sourceforge.net/metaphone/


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