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help for ^nmatch^                                               (STB-26: dm32)
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Matching names
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        ^nmatch^ namevar1 namevar2


Description
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^nmatch^ attempts to find names that "match".  ^namevar1^ is assumed to
contain the surname and ^namevar2^ the forename for each case.  ^nmatch^
adds five variables, ^_m1-_m5^, to the current data set.  These variables
characterize the quality of matches found.  

^_m1^ is coded with a missing value for unique cases and with a common
integer value for cases that have identical values of ^namevar1^ and
^namevar2^.  ^_m2^ (^_m3^) assigns common integer values to cases with
identical values of ^namevar2^ (^namevar1^) and lexicographically adjacent
values of ^namevar1^ (^namevar2^).  ^_m4^ assigns common integer values to
cases that have identical values of ^namevar1^ and ^namevar2^ after certain
common spelling variations are made consistent.  ^_m5^ assigns common integer
values to cases that are exact matches after ^namevar1^ and ^namevar2^ are
interchanged.


Author
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        Peter Sasieni, Ph.D.
        Imperial Cancer Research Fund
        Fax:  011-44-171-269-3429


Also see
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    STB:  STB-26 dm32, STB-13 dm13, STB-13 dm13.1