Advanced text comparison

A possible solution for accents/diacritics/especial characters (it works for me but it needs work to be a real patch). I discovered that results where found by finder_find() but later eliminated by finder_find_choices() .

in finder.module add a funtion to replace especial chars with the normal ones:

function normalize ($string){
    $a = 'ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøùúûýýþÿŔŕ';
    $b = 'aaaaaaaceeeeiiiidnoooooouuuuybsaaaaaaaceeeeiiiidnoooooouuuyybyRr';
    $string = utf8_decode($string);    
    $string = strtr($string, utf8_decode($a), $b);
    $string = strtolower($string);
    return utf8_encode($string);
} 

It's easy to add as many chars as needed.

After this, go to this code in finder.module

        if (strpos($expression, 'LIKE') !== FALSE) {
              $expression = str_replace(' LIKE ', '', $expression);
              // Added strtolower() because some people were reporting
              // case-sensitivity even with the i modifier.
              $like_matches = preg_grep(
                "/^"
                . str_replace(
                    '%', '(.*?)',
                    preg_quote(strtolower($expression))
                  )
                ."$/si",
                array(strtolower($option->$field_name))
              );
              if (!empty($like_matches)) {
                $matching_names[] = $field_name;
              }
            }

And replace strtolower calls with normalize

        if (strpos($expression, 'LIKE') !== FALSE) {
              $expression = str_replace(' LIKE ', '', $expression);
              // Added strtolower() because some people were reporting
              // case-sensitivity even with the i modifier.
              $like_matches = preg_grep(
                "/^"
                . str_replace(
                    '%', '(.*?)',
                    preg_quote(normalize($expression))
                  )
                ."$/si",
                array(normalize($option->$field_name))
              );
              if (!empty($like_matches)) {
                $matching_names[] = $field_name;
              }
            }

With this code, autocomplete textfield finds nodes with CCK fields containing text as query with diferences of accents. For example it will find "Alta tensión" node with query "tension". For Spanish people (my case) this is a useful behaviour. Maybe it could be useful to add a configuration option on module.

Hope this helps.

Jordi