Function to look for similiar text

  • Thread starter Thread starter TammyG
  • Start date Start date
T

TammyG

If anyone can help me I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm
trying create a query that will look up a name from one
table and display the closest matched name from another
table.

Thanks for any help you can provide.
 
Closest? matched name.

You can use a Soundex (Search the newsgroup on the web) to get possible matches.
You can construct wild card searches to get possible matches.

But once you have returned the possible matches you will need to have some kind
of algorithm in code to do this. What are your rules for "closest"?

For example, which of the following is closest to Smith.

Smyth, Smitty, Smoth, Schmidt, Smythe, Simth

Smyth is only one character off and that is a vowel.
Simth has all 5 characters, but two are transposed.
Smitty has the first 4 characters matching

OR does one of the other options represent the closest match.

In other words this is not a simple problem for a computer. Fairly easy for a
human in most cases.
 
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