NAME Text::Query::Simple - Match text against simple query expression and return relevance value for ranking SYNOPSIS use Text::Query::Simple; # Constructor $query = Text::Query::Simple->new([QSTRING] [OPTIONS]); # Methods $query->prepare(QSTRING [OPTIONS]); $query->match([TARGET] [OPTIONS]); DESCRIPTION This module provides an object that tests a string or list of strings against a query expression similar to an AltaVista "simple query" and returns a "relevance value." Elements of the query expression may be regular expressions or literal text. Query expressions are compiled into an internal form when a new object is created or the `prepare' method is called; they are not recompiled on each match. Query expressions consist of words (sequences of non- whitespace), regexps or phrases (quoted strings) separated by whitespace. Words or phrases prefixed with a `+' must be present for the expression to match; words or phrases prefixed with a `- ' must be absent for the expression to match. A successful match returns a count of the number of times any of the words (except ones prefixed with `-') appeared in the text. This type of result is useful for ranking documents according to relevance. A word or phrase may be followed by a number in parentheses; this specifies a weight to be given it. INSTALLATION This module is pure Perl, so you can simply copy it into the appropriate directory. AUTHOR Eric Bohlman (ebohlman@netcom.com) The parse_tokens routine was adapted from the parse_line routine in Text::Parsewords. COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 1998 Eric Bohlman. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. =cut