title: How do I do a fuzzy match of company names in MYSQL with PHP for auto-complete?
body: <p>My users will import through cut and paste a large string that will contain company names. </p>
  
  <p>I have an existing and growing MYSQL database of companies names, each with a unique company_id.</p>
  
  <p>I want to be able to parse through the string and assign to each of the user-inputed company names a fuzzy match.</p>
  
  <p>Right now, just doing a straight-up string match, is also slow.  ** Will Soundex indexing be faster?  How can I give the user some options as they are typing? **</p>
  
  <p>For example, someone writes:</p>
  
  <pre>
  Microsoft       -> Microsoft
  Bare Essentials -> Bare Escentuals
  Polycom, Inc.   -> Polycom
  </pre>
  
  <p>I have found the following threads that seem similar to this question, but the poster has not approved and I'm not sure if their use-case is applicable:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/309479/how-to-find-best-fuzzy-match-for-a-string-in-a-large-string-database">How to find best fuzzy match for a string in a large string database</a></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/322701/matching-inexact-company-names-in-java">Matching inexact company names in Java</a></p>