metaphone

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

metaphone — Calculate the metaphone key of a string

Description

string metaphone ( 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].

Parameters

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.

Return Values

Returns the metaphone key as a string, or FALSE on failure.

Examples

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"