Wildcard Function for finding word with similiar patterns

[zagzebski]

Is there a some kind of function that will match these similar (but not exact) patterns. Some kind of function to capture this pattern in an if statement?:

NE Region

N.E. Region

NERegion

Steve

[jonathandienst · Accepted solution]

No simple function, but if you "normalize" the strings like this to compare:

     KeepChar(Lower(Field), 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz')

This will discard all non-alpha characters and set all to the same case. Add language special characters to the KeepChar() list to meet your needs.

If that is insufficient, you can use a VB script (or JS) function to calculate the Levenshtien distance between the two strings to compare. I no longer have the code for this, but details and pseudocode here should make it straightforward:

Levenshtein distance - Wikipedia

[zagzebski]

Thanks much Jonathan!