Selecting a similar sting

[lives4him06]

I have a string $str and a string array $strarr such that:

$str = "virginia";

and

$strarr[0] = "virginia";
$strarr[1] = "virgina";
$strarr[2] = "maryland";
$strarr[3] = "vrginia";
$strarr[4] = "Viginia";
$strarr[5] = "atlanta";

I want to compare $str to each element in $strarr and return all the elements that are similar to $str.

In other words, when the comparison is completed, the following will be returned:

$strarr[0] = "virginia";
$strarr[1] = "virgina";
$strarr[3] = "vrginia";
$strarr[4] = "Viginia";

but not:

$strarr[2] = "maryland";
$strarr[5] = "atlanta";

How do i do this?

[bubblenut]

Have a look at [man]levenshtein[/man] (mathematical similarity) and [man]metraphone[/man] (phonetic similarity).

[stolzyboy]

you can also use similar_text and base it off of percentages

below is an example i based off of your strings

NOTE: all of the methods above are very similar in nature, i just used this one cuz i had one already, just used your strings

<?php

$string_check = "virginia";

$string_verify1 = "virginia"; 
$string_verify2 = "virgina"; 
$string_verify3 = "maryland"; 
$string_verify4 = "vrginia"; 
$string_verify5 = "Viginia"; 
$string_verify6 = "atlanta"; 

similar_text($string_check, $string_verify1, $percentage1);
similar_text($string_check, $string_verify2, $percentage2);
similar_text($string_check, $string_verify3, $percentage3);
similar_text($string_check, $string_verify4, $percentage4);
similar_text($string_check, $string_verify5, $percentage5);
similar_text($string_check, $string_verify6, $percentage6);

echo "Match Percentage 1: " . number_format($percentage1, 0) . " (" . $string_check . " to " . $string_verify1 . ")<br>";
echo "Match Percentage 2: " . number_format($percentage2, 0) . " (" . $string_check . " to " . $string_verify2 . ")<br>";
echo "Match Percentage 3: " . number_format($percentage3, 0) . " (" . $string_check . " to " . $string_verify3 . ")<br>";
echo "Match Percentage 4: " . number_format($percentage4, 0) . " (" . $string_check . " to " . $string_verify4 . ")<br>";
echo "Match Percentage 5: " . number_format($percentage5, 0) . " (" . $string_check . " to " . $string_verify5 . ")<br>";
echo "Match Percentage 6: " . number_format($percentage6, 0) . " (" . $string_check . " to " . $string_verify6 . ")<br>";
?>

and it outputs:
Match Percentage 1: 100 (virginia to virginia)
Match Percentage 2: 93 (virginia to virgina)
Match Percentage 3: 25 (virginia to maryland)
Match Percentage 4: 93 (virginia to vrginia)
Match Percentage 5: 80 (virginia to Viginia)
Match Percentage 6: 27 (virginia to atlanta)