Using replacement to get possible outcomes to then search through HUGE amount of data
- by Samuel Cambridge
I have a database table holding 40 million records (table A).
Each record has a string a user can search for.
I also have a table with a list of character replacements (table B) i.e. i = Y, I = 1 etc.
I need to be able to take the string a user is searching for, iterate through each letter and create an array of every possible outcome (the users string, then each outcome with alternative letters used).
I need to check for alternatives on both lower and uppercase letters in the word
A search string can be no longer than 10 characters long.
I'm using PHP and a MySQL database.
Does anyone have any thoughts / articles / guidance on doing this in an efficient way?
