(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
metaphone — Calculate the metaphone key of a string
$string, int $max_phonemes = 0): string
Calculates the metaphone key of string.
Similar to soundex() metaphone creates the same key for similar sounding words. It's more accurate than soundex() as it knows the basic rules of English pronunciation. The metaphone generated keys are of variable length.
Metaphone was developed by Lawrence Philips <lphilips at verity dot com>. It is described in ["Practical Algorithms for Programmers", Binstock & Rex, Addison Wesley, 1995].
stringThe input string.
max_phonemes
This parameter restricts the returned metaphone key to
max_phonemes characters in length.
However, the resulting phonemes are always transcribed completely, so the
resulting string length may be slightly longer than max_phonemes.
The default value of 0 means no restriction.
Returns the metaphone key as a string.
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 8.0.0 |
The function returned false on failure.
|
Example #1 metaphone() basic example
<?php
var_dump(metaphone('programming'));
var_dump(metaphone('programmer'));
?>
The above example will output:
string(7) "PRKRMNK" string(6) "PRKRMR"
Example #2 Using the max_phonemes parameter
<?php
var_dump(metaphone('programming', 5));
var_dump(metaphone('programmer', 5));
?>
The above example will output:
string(5) "PRKRM" string(5) "PRKRM"
Example #3 Using the max_phonemes parameter
In this example, metaphone() is advised to produce a string
of five characters, but that would require to split the final phoneme
('x' is supposed to be transcribed to 'KS'),
so the function returns a string with six characters.
<?php
var_dump(metaphone('Asterix', 5));
?>
The above example will output:
string(6) "ASTRKS"