This is the first CRAN release of phonics since
1.3.10.
Correctness
Reconciled every exported phonetic encoder with its primary or
authoritative algorithm specification and added independent conformance
cases for the documented rules.
Corrected user-visible output in Caverphone 2, Cologne, Match Rating
comparison, original and USDA Modified NYSIIS, Phonex, Roger Root,
Refined Soundex edge handling, and Census Modified Statistics Canada
encoding. Examples include the Caverphone 2 initial-Y rule,
Modified NYSIIS terminal and contextual rules, Roger Root’s encoding of
Breschnew (09462), and Statistics Canada
normalization of garçon when cleaning is disabled
(GRCN).
Made all four ONCA variants explicit compositions of NYSIIS followed
by Soundex, including the package’s modified and refined
combinations.
Reliability and portability
Hardened the native C++ implementations against out-of-bounds
lookaround, unsafe character indexing, and missing values, and removed
the undefined (char)NULL sentinel behavior.
Repaired compilation and execution on Alpine Linux with musl libc
and added regression protection for Metaphone GH
boundaries.
Removed the unnecessary Boost usage and the BH package
dependency.
API and validation
Defined maxCodeLen as a single non-negative whole
number wherever it is supported. Invalid, missing, fractional,
non-finite, negative, and non-scalar values now fail with a
package-owned diagnostic before reaching native or substring
operations.
Cologne retains maxCodeLen = NULL as its historical
unbounded default; explicit values now validate and truncate the
result.
The USDA Modified NYSIIS variant now warns and returns
NA for names ending in JR or SR,
as required by its published input rules.
Corrected the advertised modified-ONCA dispatch path and
all-NA Match Rating comparison behavior.
Testing
Migrated to testthat edition 3 and a conventional CRAN-executed test
entry point.
Added algorithm-conformance, public-contract, integration, boundary,
historical-regression, and broad fixture-based coverage across all
exported functions and algorithm variants.
Documentation
Completed a package-wide reference audit, committed reproducible
roxygen output, and added an independent documentation-freshness
check.
Corrected citations, algorithm authorities, argument contracts,
examples, and the package reference material.