>I'm building an online dictionary with CFMX and
>Access 2000. I'd like to do what Webster's (http://www.m-w.com) does, which
>is: if you search for "kaflooey", the results page tells you there's no
>such entry in the dictionary, and they gives you a list of 10 possible
>alternatives, similar in spelling (e.g., "kerflooey").
I've been doing some additional searching, and a message on this forum a
couple of weeks ago (Paul Vernon,
http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=m:4:33876:170342) tangentially
talks about a dictionary search on several commercial databases (e.g.,
Webster, CIA factbook, etc.). They seem to be using a number of alternative
algorythms to match strings. I found several websites mention these strategies:
exact Match words exactly
prefix Match prefixes
suffix Match suffixes
substring Match substring occurring anywhere in word
re POSIX 1003.2 regular expressions (-)
re1 Old (basic) regular expressions
fnmatch fnmatch-like (* ? as wildcards) (-)
soundex Match using SOUNDEX algorithm (--)
lev Match words within Levenshtein Distance One
metaphone metaphone algorithm (--)
Has anyone used any of these systems (or any other way of matching words to
a dictionary database)? Any ideas/suggestions on how to implement any of
these (Levenshtein gave me the best results when I tried several searches
at http://www.web-architect.co.uk/cfx_dict.cfm)
Thanks in advance,
Roberto Perez
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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