Package: libagrep-ocaml-dev (1.0-10 and others)

Wu-Manber algorithm for string searching with errors

This OCaml library implements the Wu-Manber algorithm for string searching with errors, popularized by the "agrep" Unix command and the "glimpse" file indexing tool. It was developed as part of a search engine for a largish MP3 collection; the "with error" searching comes handy for those who can't spell Liszt or Shostakovitch.

Given a search pattern and a string, this algorithm determines whether the string contains a substring that matches the pattern up to a parameterizable number N of "errors". An "error" is either a substitution (replace a character of the string with another character), a deletion (remove a character) or an insertion (add a character to the string). In more scientific terms, the number of errors is the Levenshtein edit distance between the pattern and the matched substring.

The search patterns are roughly those of the Unix shell, including one-character wildcard (?), character classes ([0-9]) and multi-character wildcard (*). In addition, conjunction (&) and alternative (|) are supported. General regular expressions are not supported, however.

This package contains all the development stuff you need to use the agrep OCaml library in your programs.

Tags: Software Development: OCaml Development, Libraries, Implemented in: OCaml, Role: Development Library, Purpose: Searching, Works with: Text