Metaphone3 is a more accurate version of the original Soundex algorithm. It's designed so that similar-sounding words in American English share the same keys. For example Smith, Smyth, Smithe, Smythe all encode to SM0 primary and XMT alt. Whereas Schmidt encodes to XMT primary with no secondary.
Searching for matches where either primary or secondary matches will give the best results.
You can read more about Metaphone on Wikipedia.
Basic usage of the encoder looks like this:
e := &metaphone3.Encoder{}
prim, second := e.Encode("Smith")An Encoder is designed to be re-used to reduce memory pressure at scale and has three settable options. An Encoder is not thread-safe so it is not safe to use one Encoder across goroutines. If you're comparing values you must use the exact same options.
| Option | Type | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
EncodeExact |
bool |
false |
Setting EncodeExact to true will tighten the output so that certain sounds will be differentiated. E.g. more separation between hard "G" sounds and hard "K" sounds. |
EncodeVowels |
bool |
false |
Setting EncodeVowels to true will include non-first-letter vowel sounds in the output. By default only consonent sounds are included. |
MaxLength |
int |
metaphone3.DefaultMaxLength |
This limits the output of long words and is useful to reduce the cycles and memory spent on processing long words. |
metaphone3.DefaultMaxLength |
int |
8 | If MaxLength is 0 (or negative) then it defaults as metaphone3.DefaultMaxLength, which starts as 8 (like the java implementation). |
Additional usage details available in the godocs.
The reference implementation of metaphone3 in Java can be found here.
- Fix ROBILL
- Fix lengths for very long words where certain situations would cause the primary or secondary to get too long and the other would get truncated. (e.g. Villafranca when EncodeVowel is true)
- Fix JAKOB
- Fix ending CIAS and CIOS (e.g. MECIAS)
- Fix words starting with HARGER
- Fix SUPERNODE (prevent D from being silent)