Fuzzy match searches are best used when searching for a term that is commonly misspelled or to search for a term along with any possible typos. Fuzzy matches increase the number of records returned by allowing flexibility in the spelling of the search term to capture additional records that may be relevant to a search term.
To form a fuzzy match query enter the search term, followed by a tilde, followed by the number of edits allowed. For example:
arrhythmia~1Edits are changes to the original term in the form of added letters, deleted letters, substituted letters, or transposition of letters. In the above example, arrhythmia~1 will return the following results:
Example Query: arrhythmia~1
| Example Results | Edit Types | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| arrythmia | deletion | Arrythmia is missing the first 'h' |
| arrhythmic | substitution | Arrhythmic changed the ending 'a' to 'c' |
| arrhythmiae | addition | Arrhythmiae added an 'e' to the end |
| arryhthmia | transposition | Arryhthmia swapped 'y' and 'h' |
Edit distance, specified by the number following the tilde, can be the whole numbers 0, 1, or 2. Unlike proximity searches, which doesn’t have a specified maximum number of allowed position changes, fuzzy matches have a maximum edit distance of 2.
Results returned after a fuzzy match search is executed are sorted by relevance where records containing the most number of characters from the search term in the same order appear at the top of the results table.