Text::English(3pm)					User Contributed Perl Documentation					Text::English(3pm)

NAME

       Text::English - Porter's stemming algorithm

SYNOPSIS

	   use Text::English;
	   @stems = Text::English::stem( @words );

DESCRIPTION

       This routine applies the Porter Stemming Algorithm to its parameters, returning the stemmed words.  It is derived from the C program
       "stemmer.c" as found in freewais and elsewhere, which contains these notes:

	  Purpose:    Implementation of the Porter stemming algorithm documented
		      in: Porter, M.F., "An Algorithm For Suffix Stripping,"
		      Program 14(3), July 1980, pp. 130-137.
	  Provenance: Written by B. Frakes and C. Cox, 1986.

       I have re-interpreted areas that use Frakes and Cox's "WordSize" function. My version may misbehave on short words starting with "y", but I
       can't think of any examples.

       The step numbers correspond to Frakes and Cox, and are probably in Porter's article (which I've not seen).  Porter's algorithm still has
       rough spots (e.g current/currency, -ings words), which I've not attempted to cure, although I have added support for the British -ise
       suffix.

NOTES

       This is version 0.1. I would welcome feedback, especially improvements to the punctuation-stripping step.

AUTHOR

       Ian Phillipps <ian@unipalm.pipex.com>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright Public IP Exchange Ltd (PIPEX).  Available for use under the same terms as perl.

perl v5.14.2							    2005-04-10							Text::English(3pm)