Common Uses
- Spell checkers can often contain phonetic algorithms. The Metaphone algorithm, for example, can take an incorrectly spelt word and create a code. The code is then looked up in directory for words with the same or similar Metaphone. Words that have the same or similar Metaphone become possible alternative spellings.
- Search functionality will often use phonetic algorithms to find results that don't match exactly the term(s) used in the search. Searching for names can be difficult as there are often multiple alternative spellings for names. An example is the name Claire. It has two alternatives, Clare/Clair, which are both pronounced the same. Searching for one spelling wouldn't show results for the two others. Using Soundex all three variations produce the same Soundex code, C460. By searching names based on the Soundex code all three variations will be returned.
Read more about this topic: Phonetic Algorithm
Famous quotes containing the word common:
“There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius, and two-fifths sheer fudge.
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters,
In a way to make people of common sense damn metres,
Who has written some things quite the best of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)