Create custom IN-function t-sql depending levenshtein distance

Question

I am actually not good in functions in SQL, i am more a java/android programmer. But for a school project i need to check if a String is in some array in T-SQL. But i am comparing data from two different companies, and they both have some flaws in their data. The data of one of the companies is in a Database, the other from excel.

One way to do this is using the LIKE function from SQL ofcourse, but i am not very sure what the criteria are. What would be perfect is a function like the sql function IN, but that requires a perfect match...

So what i did is the following:

Create a T-SQL function that gives the Levenshtein distance , it compares two strings and gives the Levenshtein distance.

This function works good.

The next step for me is to create a function with the following parameters:

• input string - the string to check
• levdist int - the minimal levenstein distance to give a match
  (perfect match would be 0)
• arr array/table/llist (cant find how a comma separated string (like you put in the IN function) is called - where to check

What i have so far is this:

    CREATE FUNCTION inArrayWithLevenstheinDist 
(
    -- Add the parameters for the function here
    @stringToCheck varchar,
    @levDist int,
    @arr TABLE ??? 
)
RETURNS Boolean
AS
BEGIN
    -- Declare the return variable here
    DECLARE @Result bool
    SET @Result = FALSE

    -- Add the T-SQL statements to compute the return value here
    DECLARE @intFlag INT
    SET @intFlag = 1
    WHILE (@intFlag <=5)
    BEGIN
    IF [100].dbo.LEVENSTEINDIST(@stringToCheck,arr(@intFlag) < @levDist
    SET @Result = TRUE
    END //end if 


    SET @intFlag = @intFlag + 1
    IF @intFlag = arr.size ??????
    BREAK;
    END //end while
    GO





    -- Return the result of the function
    RETURN @Result

END //end function
GO

This doesnt work and gives compile errors. So my two questions are (what i think are the points my code is wrong)

• how to return a boolean value in a function (i cant find it :S )? Offcourse i can return an in integer and use 0 for false and 1 for true or so, but it should be possible

• how to use an array/list/table like in the standard T-SQL IN-function?