Calculates the metaphone key of str.
Similar to soundex() metaphone creates the same key for similar sounding words. It's more accurate than soundex() as it knows the basic rules of English pronunciation. The metaphone generated keys are of variable length.
Metaphone was developed by Lawrence Philips <[email protected]>. It is described in ["Practical Algorithms for Programmers", Binstock & Rex, Addison Wesley, 1995].
Note: This function was added in PHP 4.0.