This module parses a query string into a data structure to be handled by external search engines. For examples of such engines, see File::Tabular and Search::Indexer.
The query string can contain simple terms, "exact phrases", field names and comparison operators, '+/-' prefixes, parentheses, and boolean connectors.
The parser can be parameterized by regular expressions for specific notions of "term", "field name" or "operator" ; see the "new" method. The parser has no support for lemmatization or other term transformations : these should be done externally, before passing the query data structure to the search engine.
The data structure resulting from a parsed query is a tree of terms and operators, as described in the "parse" method. The interpretation of the structure is up to the external search engine that will receive the parsed query ; the present module does not make any assumption about what it means to be "equal" or to "contain" a term.
INSTALLATION
To install this module type the following:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
DEPENDENCIES
None
RELATED MODULES
File::Tabular (management of flat text files containg data organised in rows and columns) and Search::Indexer (full-text indexing) make use of the present module.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
Copyright (C) 2005 by Laurent Dami.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.