Hi Monks,

I'm after a bit of advice/suggestions on how to best achieve the following:

I have a list of names + initials that I pull from a database and want to check to see if there could be similar names in the db...
smith j could match smith jn
mayer-handel c could match mayer handel c
jones t jnr could match jones t
etc...
I can only think of two methods for doing this:

1. do a select using mysql - my problem here is i dont know how to do such a complex select (or even if it could be done)
2. select all names, store them in a hash and then foreach author scroll through the hash running a "match sub" on each name to see if it matches

# Do some matching
foreach my $auth_id (keys %authors) {
  foreach my $mid (keys %authors) {
        print "$authors{$auth_id}{'author'} \t matches \t $authors{$mi
+d}{'author'}\n" if ( &matchme( $authors{ $auth_id}, $authors{$mid} ) 
+);
  } # end-foreach
} # end-foreach

sub matchme {
  # return true for a match otherwise false.
} # end-sub

[download]
2 doesnt seem like the most efficient way of doing things, (10 000 records = 100 000 loops) so I was after any other ideas about the path to take?
Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Reagen

In reply to Methodology for matching in hashes by rsiedl

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.