Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Thu, 19 May 2005 14:09:32 +1000, John Machin wrote: > > > None of the other approaches make the mistake of preserving the first > > letter -- this alone is almost enough reason for jettisoning soundex. > > Off-topic now, but you've made me curious. > > Why is this a bad idea?
Because of situations like, for example, my mother's last name, which originally started with "Y" but got anglicized to a name beginning with "E". Same name, different Soundex codes, and the problem occurs only occurs because of Soundex's preservation of the exact initial letter. > How would you handle the case of "barow" and "marow"? (Barrow and > marrow, naturally.) Without the first letter, they sound identical. Why is > throwing that information away a good thing? No one's suggesting throwing away the first letter's information, just removing the special treatment for it. "Barow" becomes 1600 and "Marow" becomes 5600. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
