(PHP 4, PHP 5)
metaphone — Calculate the metaphone key of a string
$str
[, int $phonemes
= 0
] )
Calculates the metaphone key of str
.
Similar to soundex() metaphone creates the same key for similar sounding words. It's more accurate than soundex() as it knows the basic rules of English pronunciation. The metaphone generated keys are of variable length.
Metaphone was developed by Lawrence Philips <lphilips at verity dot com>. It is described in ["Practical Algorithms for Programmers", Binstock & Rex, Addison Wesley, 1995].
str
The input string.
phonemes
This parameter restricts the returned metaphone key to
phonemes
characters in length.
The default value of 0 means no restriction.
Returns the metaphone key as a string, or FALSE
on failure.
Example #1 metaphone() basic example
<?php
var_dump(metaphone('programming'));
var_dump(metaphone('programmer'));
?>
The above example will output something similar to:
string(7) "PRKRMNK" string(6) "PRKRMR"
Example #2 Using the phonemes
parameter
<?php
var_dump(metaphone('programming', 5));
var_dump(metaphone('programmer', 5));
?>
The above example will output something similar to:
string(5) "PRKRM" string(5) "PRKRM"