[PW] Re: "sounds like" searching

[Kay Lancaster]

On Sat, 2 Sep 2006, Michelle Hawk wrote:

> Does anyone know of a way to find a word (in this case, a medication),
> when the patron only knows what the word sounds like, but really doesn't

There's a coding method called "soundex" and another called "metaphone"
useful for indexing names, but I don't know of anything similar for
medications or other purposes.  In this instance, I'd be likely to 
ask my pharmacist or maybe a doctor -- giving them any additional
clues like what the med is for, and is it experimental or on the market.

http://www.creativyst.com/Doc/Articles/SoundEx1/SoundEx1.htm
http://aspell.net/metaphone/
http://www.codeproject.com/string/dmetaphone6.asp

Netrics is a recent computer program used for "dirty" data searches, 
but it's proprietary:
http://www.netrics.com/info/search/soundex2.shtml

Kay