Regular Expression for comparing words

[svelma]

Can somebody give me a regular expression to do an approximate, atleast 3 letter match between two words.

For example I have "Alex Mike" in one column and "mAlex" in another. There is a space in between Alex and Mike and we are comparing to mAlex. I think its tricky.

I tried using the following expressions:
[\w]*
[\w]{3,}?
[a-zA-Z]*
etc,
But I still don't find a match between some of the records. I have over 4000 records and I am trying to use Regex in demand tools with salesforce.

There is a fuzzy option in demand tools that avoids spaces. So, I even tried using that, but my regular expression needs some correction.
Please help me out.
Thanks,
Velma

 

[shg]

Craig provided a Sub, I provided a a user-defined functon used as in the example I showed.

If Craig's works for you, use it.

 

[craig.penny]

svelma,

I'm glad it worked for you

Cheers!