1. A method for matching a test string to a plurality of documents the steps of: converting each of the plurality of documents to a character shape code representation by mapping each character of said documents to one of a plurality of character shape codes, wherein each code of said plurality of said character shape codes represents a partial collection of all characters of said documents, wherein each character of said partial collection shares spatial features related to the x-line and baseline of all characters of said documents; converting the character shape code representation to a reduced binary data string for each of the plurality of documents, wherein the reduced binary data string is less than a binary data string corresponding to the characters of the documents; storing the reduced binary data string for each of the plurality of documents to a database; inputting a test string; converting the test string to the character shape code representation; converting the character shape code representation of the test string to the reduced binary data string; matching the reduced binary data string of the test string to the reduced binary data string of each of the plurality of documents; and outputting a list of matching documents.
6. The document matching method of claim 1, wherein the matching step comprises the steps of: (a) comparing the binary data string representation of the test string to the first bits of the binary data string representation of a current one of the plurality of documents, (b) determining if the test string at least inexactly matches the current document; (c) outputting a match signal when the test string at least inexactly matches the current document; (d) shifting the test string right one bit in the current document; (e) repeating steps a-d until one of the test string is compared to the last bits of the current document and an at least inexact match is found occurs; and (f) repeating steps a-e for each one of the plurality of documents.