How to resolve the algorithm Soundex step by step in the Ruby programming language

Published on 12 May 2024 09:40 PM

How to resolve the algorithm Soundex step by step in the Ruby programming language

Table of Contents

Problem Statement

Soundex is an algorithm for creating indices for words based on their pronunciation.

The goal is for homophones to be encoded to the same representation so that they can be matched despite minor differences in spelling   (from the   soundex   Wikipedia article). There is a major issue in many of the implementations concerning the separation of two consonants that have the same soundex code! According to the official Rules [[1]]. So check for instance if Ashcraft is coded to A-261.

Let's start with the solution:

Step by Step solution about How to resolve the algorithm Soundex step by step in the Ruby programming language

The provided Ruby code defines a soundex method for the String class, which implements the Soundex algorithm and is used to represent the phonetic sound of a word. It also includes a sounds_like method that compares two strings based on their Soundex representations.

Here's a step-by-step explanation of the code:

  1. The soundex method accepts an optional census parameter, which defaults to true if not specified.

  2. The string is converted to uppercase and all non-alphabetic characters are removed using the delete method with the SoundexCharsDel regular expression, which matches all uppercase letters except those in the SoundexChars string.

  3. The first character of the resulting string is retained, and the remaining characters are processed.

  4. All characters that are not in the SoundexCharsEx regular expression (which matches any character that is NOT in the SoundexChars string) are removed.

  5. The remaining characters are then transformed into their corresponding Soundex numbers using the tr_s method, which replaces all occurrences of characters from the SoundexChars string with their corresponding characters from the SoundexNums string.

  6. The transformed string is then truncated to the first three characters if census is true, or to the full length of the original string if census is false.

  7. Finally, the resulting string is left-padded with zeros to ensure a length of three characters.

  8. The sounds_like method simply compares the Soundex representations of two strings using the == operator. It returns true if the Soundex representations are the same, and false otherwise.

  9. In the example section at the end of the code, pairs of words are sliced using the each_slice method, and the soundex method is called on each word. The resulting Soundex representations are printed for each word.

  10. Additionally, the sounds_like method is used to compare each pair of words, and the result is printed to indicate whether the words sound alike based on their Soundex representations.

Overall, this code provides a useful implementation of the Soundex algorithm for Ruby, allowing you to easily convert strings into their phonetic representations and compare their pronunciations.

Source code in the ruby programming language

class String

  SoundexChars = 'BFPVCGJKQSXZDTLMNR'
  SoundexNums  = '111122222222334556'
  SoundexCharsEx = '^' + SoundexChars
  SoundexCharsDel = '^A-Z'

  # desc: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex
  def soundex(census = true)
    str = self.upcase.delete(SoundexCharsDel)
    str[0,1] + str[1..-1].delete(SoundexCharsEx).
                          tr_s(SoundexChars, SoundexNums)\
                          [0 .. (census ? 2 : -1)].
                          ljust(3, '0') rescue ''
  end

  def sounds_like(other)
    self.soundex == other.soundex
  end
end

%w(Soundex Sownteks Example Ekzampul foo bar).each_slice(2) do |word1, word2|
  [word1, word2].each {|word| puts '%-8s -> %s' % [word, word.soundex]}

  print "'#{word1}' "
  print word1.sounds_like(word2) ? "sounds" : "does not sound"
  print " like '#{word2}'\n"
end


  

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