Re: Phonetic searching algorithms

In article 8i5@news1.digex.net, granholm@access.digex.net (Axel Granholm) writes: >Does anyone have experience writing phonetic search algorithms for I4GL (or ESQL/C) > >I am interested in any ideas / source code. > >Thanks in advance. > >granholm@digex.net At the last place I worked we did up some rather nice code that found the word closest to the one you were looking for. It was all in C, but it could be converted. I got it out of C User's Journal from a few years ago. There was an article that gave several different methods. The one we used did have a bug in it in the source code in the magazine, but it wasn't that hard to find. This wasn't a phonetic thing, but it was configurable as to how much weight to give to different likenesses. We used it in a popup menu application. The list of choices could be really long, so if the user knew what they wanted they could start typing it. As they typed, the closest fit word would be highlighted. As soon as they found the one they wanted, they could just hit return. This would find the word even if they didn't spell it quite right. Which was rather common. I can dig up the article ( I think I know approximately which one of the boxes in the garage that I haven't unpacked yet is the right one) and give you some more info. Martin