JLIS abstracts

OWOLABI (O)

OWOLABI (O). Dictionary Organization for Efficient Similarity Retrieval. 18,1;1993;1-11

Points out that searching dictionaries for an exact match to a given input string can be done very efficiently, performance degrades, however, when inexact matches have to be located. Mentions that approximate string-matching methods enable inexact matches to be located by comparing the search string with every dictionary entry. To avoid such exhaustive searches, dictionaries are generally partitioned according to some criteria. Examines some methods of dictionary organisation that could lead to improved performances. Discusses the use of a variant of the n-gram method as a pre-selection technique alongwith a method using two levels of indexing. Experimental results show that, of the methods examined, indexing the string on each half gives the best result. Concludes that a two-level indexing method combining two partitioning criteria also performs reasonably well and the n-gram technique appears to be as good as these two.