Description
The SOUNDEX function allows for phonetic conversions of strings. It takes the general form:
SOUNDEX(expression)
Where:
expression may evaluate to any data type but the function will only give meaningful results for English words.
Note:
The phonetic equivalent of a string is calculated as the first alphabetic character in the string followed by a 1 to 3-digit representation of the rest of the word.
The digit string is calculated as:
Characters
Value Code
B F P V
1
C G J K Q S X Z
2
D T
3
L
4
M N
5
R
6
All characters not contained in the above table are ignored. The function is case insensitive and identical sequences of a character are interpreted as a single instance of the character.
The idea is to provide a crude method of identifying words such as last names even if they are not spelt correctly. The function is not foolproof, andshould not be the sole method of identifying a word.
An example of use is as:
INPUT VAR_IN Lastname = SOUNDEX(VAR_IN)
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