Text::Soundex

See the current Perl documentation for Text::Soundex.

Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:

Text::Soundex - Implementation of the Soundex Algorithm as Described by Knuth

  use Text::Soundex;

  $code = soundex $string;            # get soundex code for a string
  @codes = soundex @list;             # get list of codes for list of strings

  # set value to be returned for strings wit
    

    

This module implements the soundex algorithm as described by Donald Knuth
in Volume 3 of The Art of Computer Programming. The algorithm is intended to hash words (in particular surnames) into a
small space using a simple model which approximates the sound of the word
when spoken by an English speaker. Each word is reduced to a four character
string, the first character being an upper case letter and the remaining
three being digits.


If there is no soundex code representation for a string then the value of
$soundex_nocode is returned. This is initially set to undef, but many people seem to prefer an unlikely value like Z000
(how unlikely this is depends on the data set being dealt with.) Any value
can be assigned to $soundex_nocode.


In scalar context soundex returns the soundex code of its first argument, and in array context a list
is returned in which each element is the soundex code for the corresponding
argument passed to soundex e.g.


  @codes = soundex qw(Mike Stok);


leaves @codes containing ('M200', 'S320').



EXAMPLES

Knuth's examples of various names and the soundex codes they map to are
listed below:


  Euler, Ellery -> E460
  Gauss, Ghosh -> G200
  Hilbert, Heilbronn -> H416
  Knuth, Kant -> K530
  Lloyd, Ladd -> L300
  Lukasiewicz, Lissajous -> L222


so:


  $code = soundex 'Knuth';              # $code contains 'K530'
  @list = soundex qw(Lloyd Gauss);      # @list contains 'L300', 'G200'



LIMITATIONS

As the soundex algorithm was originally used a long time ago in the 
US it considers only the English alphabet and
pronunciation.


As it is mapping a large space (arbitrary length strings) onto a small
space (single letter plus 3 digits) no inference can be made about the
similarity of two strings which end up with the same soundex code. For
example, both Hilbert and Heilbronn end up with a soundex code of H416.



AUTHOR

This code was implemented by Mike Stok (stok@cybercom.net) from the description given by Knuth. Ian Phillips (ian@pipex.net) and Rich Pinder (rpinder@hsc.usc.edu) supplied ideas and spotted mistakes.