man Text::English () - Porter's stemming algorithm
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.