Right... I've just discovered something I've never seen before and was wondering what was known / thought of about it...

For those who don't know -

The 'soundex' function in a where clause matches using the phonetics of the word passed to it. For example :

Code:

select field1, field2 from   tablename where  field1 = soundex('matthew')

... would match 'matthew', 'mathew' and a few other words (probably 'mathu' too).

I mentioned this to an Oracle programmer I know and she told me the function was erratic and known to cause problems.

Anyone have any ideas about this? It seems tremendously useful to me - especially with regard to searches. Are there any known problems with the way it breaks the words down into phonetics? Does it actually break them down or is it "cheating"?

Thanks

almosthere

I do know that "soundex" libraries and similar have been around for many many years, but they don't seem to have taken over the world;  I've always worried about exactly what they will and won't match and how predicatbale they are, and either others share my worries, or they have proven (as you suggest) to be erratic.

Now MySQL does have an RLIKE that allows you to match those nice regular expresson things

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