NAME

String::Similex - gives a code to compare similar "visual" strings

SYNOPSIS

  use String::Similex;

  $code  = similex($string);
  @codes = similex(@strings);

  # set value to be returned for strings without a similex code

  $similex_code = ' ';

DESCRIPTION

The similex code is used to compare strings that are visually equivalent, character sequences that resemble each other.

EXAMPLES

Using in your code:

 $code  = similex('Novis');          # $code contains '54C38'
 @codes = similex(qw(Linux MacOSX)); # @codes contains '3541', '521481'

Similar strings:

  linux, |imux                 ->  3541
  CISCO, C15CO, ciscu          ->  13814
  gandalf, ganda1f, gggandalf  ->  B25A231

TODO

Probably two things:

  o Define a fixed code length as of Soundex. Which value should be
    confortable ?

  o More study of the algorithm. Should 's' be equivalent to 'z' ?
    But 'z' is not like '5'. :/ Different behaviour with upper and
    lower case letters.

SEE ALSO

Of course Text::Soundex. The String::Similarity calculates a similarity fuzzy value of two strings. The String::Approx let's you match and substitute strings approximately.

AUTHOR

Paulo A Ferreira <biafra@cpan.org>

Please send any suggestion. This implementation follow the structure of Text::Soundex. It sounded nice.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2003 by Paulo A Ferreira

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.