Skip blanks when comparing. This means that matching blanks do not count for the matching. This option should not be used with the

CLEAN

option.

Remove delimiters and all blanks before matching. Only alphabetic and numeric characters are left and converted to upper-case, all others are replaced by blanks, then all blanks are removed. This option should not be used with the

BLANKS

option.

This option will cause two transposed characters to match as if they were in sequence. For example,

TITLE and TITEL

will match if this option is set.

Define how far ahead the routine looks for a match when two characters do not match.

[number]

is a value in the range 1 to the length of the string. For example,

1234567890 and 12890

have matching start and end sections; the middle part – 34567 – will be skipped if

SYNCPOS*6

(or greater) is specified. For very flexible matching specify

CLEAN+SYNCMAX

. A value of 0 for [number] is the default and is the same as specifying SYNCMAX. A value of 1 means no synchronization, i.e. the compare fails on the first non-match.

LOPT=(SYNCMAX)

The routine will use the full field length as the

SYNCPOS

value. It conflicts with

SYNCPOS

. This is the default.

LOPT=(SYNCS1 / SYNCS2 / SYNCS3 / SYNCS4)

The option causes a look-ahead to try and resynchronize when two characters do not match. The different values define how many characters should match to accept the new position as a resynchronization.

Specify only one of these values. The default is SYNCS1.

The option turns on cleaning and editing rules for String Matching. To use this option, the Method Definition must specify the algorithm that uses the Edit-list containing any special rules. Use the

CLEAN

option as well. The type of Edit-list rules must be character rule definitions.

For example, consider matching an ID number field, and the value "111111" is a null value that you do not want to consider. Use the following the Edit-list rule definition:

*S >111111<
*W ><

In the matching definition, use the following method definition:

DEFINE METHOD=STRING,EP=N3SCC,ALGNAME=<AlgName>

Use the following scheme:

LOPT=(CLEAN+CLEANEDT)

Use the following Local Options to specify reasonably accurate String Matching:

LOPT=(BLANKS+OKTRANS+SYNCPOS*2+SYNCS4)

Use the following Local Options to specify reasonably loose String Matching:

LOPT=(CLEAN+OKTRANS+SYNCMAX+SYNCS1)