Paradox Community

Items in pnews.paradox-dos

Subject:Re: Like
Date:Thu, 28 Dec 2017 00:49:40 +0000
From:Michael Kennedy <Info@KennedySoftware.ie>
Newsgroups:pnews.paradox-dos
Bernie,

> It certainly appears likely that pdox uses a form of soundex.

So, on integer/fl-point/date fields, I expect that "like" has no effect?
  > First
> character critical then focusing on next four or so characters.

Yep - personally, I did use Soundex in a few apps over the years, but I 
never liked the "first-char exact match" rule. I probably just used the 
same char-substitution rules as apply to the subsequent chars, but I forget.

> A bit of research:

Thank you. All very interesting.

> I don't think it really matters which one we use as it seems nobody 
> knows what pdox was doing anyway.

Agreed!

> An interesting trick to solve the first character limitation is to 
> prepend a common character to each term, but as we're emulating pdox 
> behavior that is is irrelevant here.

Nice trick, that!

But, one would probably then have to extend the standard rule to build a 
four-digit code (instead of a 3-digit one)?

> Conclusion:
> 
> Looks like sql default soundex is an appropriate translation for pdox 
> "LIKE".
> 
> Anyone disagree?

(Not me!).

   - Mike


> On 22/12/17 10:05 pm, Michael Kennedy wrote:
>> On 22/12/2017 00:38, Steven Green wrote:
>>> don't recall all of the testing that was done, but it was generally 
>>> concluded that it was skewed towards the first 5 characters of the 
>>> string, and was less predictable than most dot-dot options.. don't 
>>> know how you'd want to reproduce it, if you can't predict it
>>
>> AFAIR, I NEVER used "like", because I never knew how it worked.
>>
>> But, with that 5-char skew that Steve remembered, perhaps it was an 
>> implementation of (standard?) "Soundex"? If so, it would apply only to 
>> alphabetic (maybe alphanumeric?) strings:
>>    - always do an exact match on the very first char,
>>    - then match on the (english?) "sound" of the next 3/4/5/6/.. chars.
>>
>> Eg:
>>
>> If QBE has: Like paradox, this would translate to a Soundex code of P632
>>
>> Then, DB records with Paradox, Poridex, Piridicks, etc (which also 
>> translate to P632) would be matches.
>>
>> (I've not run the above example).
>>
>>    - Mike
>>
>>
>>> OK Steve, I'll take the bait!
>>>
>>> What is known of the traps/bugs/features/poo in 'LIKE'?
>>>
>>> Anyone wanna do some tests?
>>>
>>> I'll be quiet for a while trying to sensibly parse what we have so far,
>>> but will be lurking ...
>>>
>>> - Bernie
>>>
>>> ---
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