Earlier versions of dBase had a fuzzy string match function which was very useful. Our university email system in the 1980s also used fuzzy matching, so if you emailed "Alan Reese" you would get a reply on the lines, "Name not recognised, nearest matches are Allan Reese, Alan Rees". I assume this feature was killed because it was an open door for spammers. On the other hand, providing a fuzzy string match function in Stata could be a useful addition.
Allan
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Aaron
Sent: 28 October 2005 16:49
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: st: Re: Finding "near"-matches
The topic gets more and more interesting. I often need to match
'fuzzily' the names from two databases that have very minor
differences. here are some examples:
Ford Co.
Ford Corporation
Ford Inc. (just an example)
or
XYZ Tech
XYZ Technology Inc.
Can you recommend some programs to generate a list of 'fuzzy' or
'near' matches for a name (one or more than one alphanumeric
characters)? Even if a program provides the three possible matches for
the name 'Ford', that's still better than hand-checking.
Aaron
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