in reply to Some kind of fuzzy logic.

Basically, you're matching abbreviations. So, you need a 2-way mapping between full name and abbreviation. Once you have that, you can do a split, remove periods, and replace using your mapping.

Is this a perfect solution? No. But, it'll get you 80% of the way there ...

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We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

The idea is a little like C++ templates, except not quite so brain-meltingly complicated. -- TheDamian, Exegesis 6

... strings and arrays will suffice. As they are easily available as native data types in any sane language, ... - blokhead, speaking on evolutionary algorithms

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

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Re: Re: Some kind of fuzzy logic.
by BazB (Priest) on Oct 17, 2003 at 20:48 UTC

    Unfortunately getting the extra 20% is an exercise in diminishing returns.

    This is a very complex problem and you'll need to decide how much time (and/or money) you're prepared to spend getting as close to a complete solution as you deem necessary.

    There are some pretty impressive (and very expensive) commercial solutions dedicated to this problem.

    However you approach it, a machine will never get to 100% accuracy (at least not at this point).

    If the information in this post is inaccurate, or just plain wrong, don't just downvote - please post explaining what's wrong.
    That way everyone learns.
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