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group by similar items

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 11:52 am
by magicrobotmonkey
lets say i need to group by a field, say last name, where the data is user input and may be spelled funny - like smith and smithe being the same person or something. how can i do this in mysql?

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:02 pm
by feyd
potentially regex, but that requires the spelling to be nearly the same... or using SOUNDEX, or the "SOUNDS LIKE" stuff.. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/String_functions.html

Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:41 pm
by magicrobotmonkey
thanks - that worked somewhat - seems the clients are very bad spellers!