I enhanced Soundex to correctly handle multi-word strings
Hello HN. I built Flookup Data Wrangler, a powerful Google Sheets add-on for data cleaning without writing single line of code. Traditional Soundex is designed for single words like "John" and "Jonny", making data cleaning comparisons between such strings straightforward. However, typical Soundex outputs cannot be used to handle multi-word or reordered string comparisons like "John Doe" vs "Doe Jonny", as this would produce inaccurate results. To address this, I modified the Soundex algorithm to support multi-word and reordered strings by adding a helper function that re-encodes the output…
What it does
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hello HN. I built Flookup Data Wrangler, a powerful Google Sheets add-on for data cleaning without writing single line of code. Traditional Soundex is designed for single words like "John" and "Jonny", making data cleaning comparisons between such strings straightforward. However, typical Soundex outputs cannot be used to handle multi-word or reordered string comparisons like "John Doe" vs "Doe Jonny", as this would produce inaccurate results. To address this, I modified the Soundex algorithm to support multi-word and reordered strings by adding a helper function that re-encodes the output into a format that can be used for accurate text-to-text comparisons. The optimisation keeps overhead minimal, ensuring negligible impact on performance. By leveraging this enhancement, Flookup users can do the following: + Fuzzy matching and merging + Duplicate highlighting and removal + Extracting a list of unique values ... all based on the sound the strings or parts of the strings make (as pronounced in English). I would love feedback, especially from those into data cleaning (which I'm guessing is everyone). If you are curious to give it a try, here is a quick start guide: https://www.getflookup.com/get-started
Does the same job
all alternatives →- GSGoogle Sheets add-on to compare text, fuzzy-match, highlight duplicates2020 · ▲80
I created an add-on for Google Sheets called Flookup, and it comes both as a free version and a VERY AFFORDABLE paid version. At its core, Flookup is a fuzzy matching add-on that helps you manage text that is less than a 100% match. Beyond that it can be used to: 1. Search for and match data regardless of whether it contains typos. 2. Highlight and delete duplicates duplicates even if the data has mismatched text. 3. Calculate the percentage similarity between strings. 4. Extract unique values from any column based on percentage similarity. 5. Sum and find the average of numbers based on…
- FDFlookup – Data cleaning by fuzzy matching2022 · ▲8
Hello HN! It has been about three years since I launched this current iteration of my Google Sheets add-on called Flookup. I'm a solo developer and, currently, I handle absolutely everything to do with Flookup from writing code, replying support emails and even marketing. It is a lot of work but very satisfying because I get to see, first hand, how helpful it has been to my userbase. Before Flookup was launched, there was only one prominent Google Sheets add-on that could be used for data cleaning (to a certain degree) but, luckily for me, that add-on had left a gap in functionality that I…
- AAAn attempt to rethink a music sequencer design2017 · github.com · ▲305
- USUse-sound, a React hook for sound effects on the web2020 · joshwcomeau.com · ▲131
- AWA Wordle clone made in Google Sheets2022 · github.com · ▲88
- ASA search engine that lets you 'add' words as vectors2013 · insightdatascience.com · ▲148
More dev tools this month
the category →
Open-source GTM skills for technical founders
Dev tools · 29d ago · gtmcofounder.com
OpenTrailPaper is open-source bike computer firmware for the LilyGO T5S3 4.7" E-Paper PRO. It supports offline maps, GPX routes, FIT recording and Bluetooth sensors.
Dev tools · 2d ago · opentrailpaper.com
Launched alongside, May 2025
the whole month →
- C9
Life & fun · 2025 · felixrieseberg.github.io
