Returns a code indicating the "sound" of the supplied word. This is intended for use in a spell checker or similar to find words that sound the same or similar.
You supply the word to be converted, and a length indicating the maximum size code you want returned.
This uses the "double metaphone" algorithm written by Lawrence Philips. It returns either a single metaphone (like KMN for Gammon) or two metaphones where an alternative pronunciation could be considered. Thus in the case of "swordfish" you could store that under SRTF or XRTF and consider both sound-alikes. If there is a comma present, then you know you had an alternative returned.
Because of this, if you specify a 4 character length, you might get back 9 characters (two 4-character metaphones, plus a comma).
Apart from the comma, only the following letters will be returned:
0 A F H J K L M N P R S T X
(First one is a zero indicating the "th" sound).
For a fast lookup, you could map each letter into a hex digit and then combine them into a single 16-bit number, eg.
0 = 0
A = 1
F = 2
H = 3
J = 4
K = 5
L = 6
M = 7
N = 8
P = 9
R = A
S = B
T = C
X = D
Note: Available in version 3.81 onwards.
VBscript example
Note Metaphone ("swordfish", 4)
Lua example
Note (Metaphone ("swordfish"))
Lua notes
The length is optional and defaults to 4.
Also available as utils.metaphone.
Returns
The converted code, or two codes separated by commas.