Pyphonetics

0.5.3 verified Fri May 01 auth: no python

A Python 3 library for phonetic encoding algorithms including Soundex, Metaphone, Double Metaphone, and others. Current version is 0.5.3, with infrequent releases.

pip install pyphonetics

Common errors

error AttributeError: module 'pyphonetics' has no attribute 'Soundex' ↓

cause Incorrect import: `import pyphonetics` then `pyphonetics.Soundex()`.

fix

Use from pyphonetics import Soundex directly.

error TypeError: 'str' object is not callable ↓

cause Overwriting the `phonetics` function variable name, e.g., `phonetics = 'foo'`.

fix

Avoid using phonetics as a variable name.

error ValueError: The word must contain only letters ↓

cause Input contains numbers or special characters.

fix

Strip non-alphabetic characters: re.sub(r'[^A-Za-z]', '', word).

Warnings

deprecated The `phonetics` function returns a tuple in older versions but now returns a string; check return type. ↓

fix Update code to expect a string or use `from pyphonetics import Soundex; code = soundex.phonetics('word')` and treat as string.

gotcha Case sensitivity: the library expects uppercase input for some algorithms; inconsistent behavior may occur. ↓

fix Always convert input to uppercase before passing: `soundex.phonetics(word.upper())`

breaking In version 0.5.0, the `phonetics` method was changed from returning a list/generator to returning a string for single results; DoubleMetaphone changed to return a tuple. ↓

fix Check the return type: for DoubleMetaphone, use `result = dm.phonetics(word); primary, secondary = result`.

gotcha The library does not support non-alphabetic characters well; numbers or punctuation may cause errors or silent failures. ↓

fix Sanitize input to only contain letters (A-Z) before encoding.

Imports

Soundex
```
from pyphonetics import Soundex
```
Standard import path.
Metaphone
```
from pyphonetics import Metaphone
```
Standard import path.
DoubleMetaphone
```
from pyphonetics import DoubleMetaphone
```
Spelling exactly 'DoubleMetaphone' (no space).
FuzzySoundex
```
from pyphonetics import FuzzySoundex
```
Standard import path.

Quickstart

Encode a word using Soundex phonetic algorithm.

from pyphonetics import Soundex
soundex = Soundex()
print(soundex.phonetics('example'))