GeoNames Forum

Hi,
I would like to make a script for fuzzy search.

Fuzzy Logic is – depending on the number selected i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4 which represent “number of characters” a user can search for a word. Depending on the selection above i.e. 1, 2 etc of fuzzy logic it would look for words making allowance for 1 or 2 or the number of fuzzy characters to be incorrect or missing in that word.

For example if we were searching for the word “CHARTERHOUSE” Fuzzy logic of 1 would allow you to search and find “CHARTERHOUSE” “CHATTERHOUSE”, “CHARTERLOUSE” etc. if it were 2 characters for fuzzy any 2 characters could be incorrect.

Please share your views with me.

Thanks.

What you are describing is often called the "Levenshtein distance". If you are searching on a lot of words then I would not waste time implementing a fuzzy search algorithm but instead look for a nice library in your coding environment that does it for you. Unless you do it for learnings sake of course then it is an interesting task to implement it efficiently on large number of documents.

Marc

Thank you Marc,

Would you please explain any method to doing this functionality if you have in your mind.

I think we save us all time if you just use your favorite search engine with the search terms. You certainly find better explanations then the one I would give you.

Marc