The ALPHANUM modifier is used with the SPELLING routine to cause the routine to replace all non-alpha and non-numeric characters with a blank character in each field prior to comparison.
For example, the following special characters are replaced with blank:
| . | period |
| , | comma |
| ' | single quote |
| " | double quote |
| - | hyphen, dash |
| # | number sign |
| + | plus sign |
| ( | left parenthesis |
| ) | right parenthesis |
| : | colon |
| ; | semicolon |
Example
Field 1: K-MART
Filed 2: K MART
Field 1 will be modified to "K MART" by replacing the "-" character with a blank character prior to comparison. Therefore, this example will return the score of 100 (exact match).