FuzzyString-UDF - fuzzy string comparison and search in string arrays

[AspirinJunkie]

This UDF provides algorithms for fuzzy string comparison and the associated similarity search in string arrays.
It offers functions for character-based comparisons, comparing the phonetics of words and the geometric distance of characters on a keyboard.

In this way, typing errors can be recognized, similar-sounding words can be detected and other spellings of words can be included in further processing.

The current function list of the UDF:

--------- fuzzy array handling:
_FS_ArraySearchFuzzy           - finds similar entries for a search value in an array
_FS_ArrayToPhoneticGroups      - groups the values of an array according to their phonetics

--------- character-based metrics:
_FS_Levenshtein                - calculate the levenshtein distance between two strings
_FS_OSA                        - calculate the OSA ("optimal string alignment") between two strings
_FS_Hamming                    - calculate the hamming distance between two strings

--------- phonetic metrics:
_FS_Soundex_getCode            - calculate the soundex code for a given word to represent the pronounciation in english
_FS_Soundex_distance           - calculate the soundex-pattern for both input values
_FS_SoundexGerman_getCode      - calculate the modified soundex code for german language for a given word to represent the pronounciation in german
_FS_SoundexGerman_distance     - calculate the soundexGerman-pattern for both input values
_FS_Cologne_getCode            - calculate the cologne phonetics code for german language for a given word to represent the pronounciation in german
_FS_Cologne_distance           - calculate the cologne phonetics distance between both input values

--------- key-position based metrics:
_FS_Keyboard_GetLayout         - return a map with coordinates for the characters for using in _FS_Keyboard_Distance_Chars()
_FS_Keyboard_Distance_Chars    - calculates the geometric key spacing between two characters on a keyboard
_FS_Keyboard_Distance_Strings  - calculate the keyboard-distance between two strings

>>sourcecode and download on github<<

[Andreik]

Nice collection of fuzzy algorithms, thanks for sharing. Just one thing I noticed and could be improved visually it's the bigint 9223372036854700000 that might be declared as a global constant since it's used several times.

[water]

Added to the wiki