This directory contains a module that implements the "Metaphone" code as a PostgreSQL user-defined function. The Metaphone system is a method of matching similar sounding names (or any words) to the same code. Metaphone was invented by Lawrence Philips as an improvement to the popular name-hashing routine, Soundex. This metaphone code is from Michael Kuhn, and is detailed at http://aspell.sourceforge.net/metaphone/metaphone-kuhn.txt Code for this (including this help file!) was liberally borrowed from the soundex() module for PostgreSQL. There are two functions: metaphone(text) : returns hash of a name metaphone(text,int) : returns hash (maximum length of int) of name --- To install it, first configure the main source tree, then run make; make install in this directory. Finally, load the function definition with psql: psql -f PREFIX/share/contrib/metaphone.sql The following are some usage examples: SELECT text_metaphone('hello world!'); SELECT text_metaphone('hello world!', 4); CREATE TABLE s (nm text)\g insert into s values ('john')\g insert into s values ('joan')\g insert into s values ('wobbly')\g select * from s where text_metaphone(nm) = text_metaphone('john')\g select nm from s a, s b where text_metaphone(a.nm) = text_metaphone(b.nm) and a.oid <> b.oid\g CREATE FUNCTION text_mp_eq(text, text) RETURNS bool AS 'select text_metaphone($1) = text_metaphone($2)' LANGUAGE 'sql'\g CREATE FUNCTION text_mp_lt(text,text) RETURNS bool AS 'select text_metaphone($1) < text_metaphone($2)' LANGUAGE 'sql'\g CREATE FUNCTION text_mp_gt(text,text) RETURNS bool AS 'select text_metaphone($1) > text_metaphone($2)' LANGUAGE 'sql'; CREATE FUNCTION text_mp_le(text,text) RETURNS bool AS 'select text_metaphone($1) <= text_metaphone($2)' LANGUAGE 'sql'; CREATE FUNCTION text_mp_ge(text,text) RETURNS bool AS 'select text_metaphone($1) >= text_metaphone($2)' LANGUAGE 'sql'; CREATE FUNCTION text_mp_ne(text,text) RETURNS bool AS 'select text_metaphone($1) <> text_metaphone($2)' LANGUAGE 'sql'; DROP OPERATOR #= (text,text)\g CREATE OPERATOR #= (leftarg=text, rightarg=text, procedure=text_mp_eq, commutator=text_mp_eq)\g SELECT * FROM s WHERE text_mp_eq(nm,'pillsbury')\g SELECT * from s where s.nm #= 'pillsbury';