weird behavior of DoubleMetaphone

Wed, Dec 14, 2016 11:35 AM #

I was wondering if anyone can answer this question.

library(PGRdup)

Both lines below return "NTFL".
DoubleMetaphone("netflix")$primary
DoubleMetaphone("net flex")$primary

Now, I modify the function a bit - I first split the string on
"space", then merge back together:

mymetaphone = function(x){
    temp <- strsplit(x, split=" ")[[1]]
    for(word in 1:length(temp)){
     temp[word]<-DoubleMetaphone(temp[word])$primary
    }
    return(paste(temp, collapse = ""))
}
mymetaphone("netflix")    # returns "NTFL"
mymetaphone("net flex")  # returns "NTFLKS"

Why such a difference between DoubleMetaphone("net flex")$primary and
mymetaphone("net flex")?
Why isn't DoubleMetaphone("net flex")$primary returning "NTFLKS"?
Thank you!

Dimitri Liakhovitski

Dimitri Liakhovitski

Wed, Dec 14, 2016 11:42 AM #

No real need to answer. I found that function 'metaphone' from package
"phonics" doesn't misbehave this way!

library(phonics)
mymetaphone = function(x){
    temp <- strsplit(x, split=" ")[[1]]
    for(word in 1:length(temp)){
     temp[word]<-metaphone(temp[word])
    }
    return(paste(temp, collapse = ""))
}

The next 4 lines return the same thing:
metaphone("netflix")
metaphone("net flex")
mymetaphone("netflix")
mymetaphone("net flex")

Dimitri

On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 2:35 PM, Dimitri Liakhovitski

<dimitri.liakhovitski at gmail.com> wrote:

Dimitri Liakhovitski