Re: st: matching strings on words

[Jeph Herrin <jeph.herrin@yale.edu>]

Thanks to Simon and Eric for their suggestions, I tried both
but in the end decided it would be faster to sort out the 60
mismatches manually.

cheers,
Jeph

Simon wrote:
> I've had a similar issue:
>
> http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2008-08/msg00477.html
>
> Simon
>
>
>
>
> On 30/03/2010 20:00, Jeph Herrin wrote:
> > I'm not sure what to call this - if I did, I might have
> > better luck with my searches for a utility. Basically,
> > I want to do something similar to the utility -nmatch-
> > which matches first and last names, but I have more than
> > two words per record.
> >
> > The problem: I have two files with lists of hospital names.
> > Hospital names tend to consist of multiple words, that get
> > used to different extent; the same hospital might be listed
> > as:
> >
> > st joseph's
> > st joseph's memorial
> > st joseph's memorial hospital
> > st joseph's memorial hospital of danbury
> >
> > etc. (There is also a lot variation on eg "Saint vs "St." and
> > "Memorial" vs "memorial", but I have trapped most of those
> > already.)
> >
> > What I'd like to do is match these on "words", and generate
> > a _merge variable which indicates how many words match vs
> > how many words there are. Then I (or some unlucky grad student)
> > can trawl through the matches and decide which ones are the
> > same hospital.
> >
> > I can see how to write a program to do such a thing, but am hoping
> > there is already a solution out there that I overlooked?
> >
> > thanks,
> > Jeph
> >
> > *
> > * For searches and help try:
> > * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> > * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> > * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
> *
> *   For searches and help try:
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> *   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
*
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