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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