man wnintro () - introduction to WordNet library functions

NAME

wnintro - introduction to WordNet library functions

DESCRIPTION

This section of the WordNet Reference Manual contains manual pages that describe the WordNet library functions and API.

Functions are organized into the following categories:

center box ; l | l | l. Category Manual Page Object File _ Database Search wnsearch (3WN) search.o Morphology morph (3WN) morph.o Misc. Utility wnutil (3WN) wnutil.o Binary Search binsrch (3WN) binsrch.o

The WordNet library is used by all of the searching interfaces provided with the various WordNet packages. Additional programs in the system, such as grind(1WN), also use functions in this library.

The WordNet library is provided in both source and binary forms (on some platforms) to allow users to build applications and tools to their own specifications that utilize the WordNet database. We do not provide programming support or assistance.

The code conforms to ANSI C standards. Functions are defined with function prototypes. If you do not have a compiler that accepts prototypes, you must edit the source code and remove the prototypes before compiling. gcc(1), version 2.95.2 was used to compile all of the Unix libraries. The same code was compiled on all platforms, using cpp(1) #ifdef statements to conditionally compile platform specific code. The platform specific definitions are:

center ; l l. UNIX Defined for all Unix operating systems PC Defined for all Windows operating system WINDOWS Defined for Windows operating system

Note that when WINDOWS is defined, PC is also defined. The redundancy goes back to when we supported both DOS and Windows.

LIST OF WORDNET LIBRARY FUNCTIONS

Not all library functions are listed below. Missing are mainly functions that are called by documented ones, or ones that were written for specific applications or tools used during WordNet development. Data structures are defined in wntypes.h.

Database Searching Functions (search.o)

findtheinfo
Primary search function for WordNet database. Returns formatted search results in text buffer. Used by WordNet interfaces to perform requested search.
findtheinfo_ds
Primary search function for WordNet database. Returns search results in linked list data structure.
is_defined
Set bit for each search type that is valid for the search word passed and return bit mask.
in_wn
Set bit for each syntactic category that search word is in.
index_lookup
Find word in index file and return parsed entry in data structure. Input word must be exact match of string in database. Called by getindex().
getindex
Find word in index file, trying different techniques - replace hyphens with underscores, replace underscores with hyphens, strip hyphens and underscores, strip periods.
read_synset
Read synset from data file at byte offset passed and return parsed entry in data structure. Calls parse_synset().
parse_synset
Read synset at current byte offset in file and return parsed entry in data structure.
free_syns
Free a synset linked list allocated by findtheinfo_ds().
free_synset
Free a synset structure.
free_index
Free an index structure.
traceptrs_ds
Recursive search algorithm to trace a pointer tree and return results in linked list.
do_trace
Do requested search on synset passed returning formatted output in buffer.

Morphology Functions (morph.o)

morphinit
Open exception list files.
re_morphinit
Close exception list files and reopen.
morphstr
Try to find base form (lemma) of word or collocation in syntactic category passed. Calls morphword() for each word in string passed.
morphword
Try to find base form (lemma) of individual word in syntactic category passed.

Utility Functions (wnutil.o)

wninit
Top level function to open database files and morphology exception lists.
re_wninit
Top level function to close and reopen database files and morphology exception lists.
cntwords
Count the number of underscore or space separated words in a string.
strtolower
Convert string to lower case and remove trailing adjective marker if found.
ToLowerCase
Convert string passed to lower case.
strsubst
Replace all occurrences of from with to in str.
getptrtype
Return code for pointer type character passed.
getpos
Return syntactic category code for string passed.
getsstype
Return synset type code for string passed.
FmtSynset
Reconstruct synset string from synset pointer.
StrToPos
Passed string for syntactic category, returns corresponding integer value.
GetSynsetForSense
Return synset for sense key passed.
GetDataOffset
Find synset offset for sense.
GetPolyCount
Find polysemy count for sense passed.
GetWORD
Return word part of sense key.
GetPOS
Return syntactic category code for sense key passed.
WNSnsToStr
Generate sense key for index entry passed.
GetValidIndexPointer
Search for string and/or base form of word in database and return index structure for word if found.
GetWNSense
Return sense number in database for sense key.
GetSenseIndex
Return parsed sense index entry for sense key passed.
default_display_message
Default function to use as value of display_message. Simply returns -1.

Binary Search Functions (binsrch.o)

bin_search
General purpose binary search function to search for key as first item on line in sorted file.
copyfile
Copy contents from one file to another.
replace_line
Replace a line in a sorted file.
insert_line
Insert a line into a sorted file.

LIST OF HEADER FILES

license.h
Text of WordNet license in various C data structure formats
setutil.h
Functions for creating and working with sets. Used to perform search.
wn.h
Top level WordNet include file that includes most others. This should be sufficient for most applications. Also lists function prototypes for library API.
wnconsts.h
Constants used by library functions and applications. Conditionally compiled code determines default pathnames and buffer sizes for different platforms,.
wnglobal.h
External declarations for global variables initialized in wnglobal.c. These variables are static: they do not change while library code is run, and they do not influence how the library operates.
wnhelp.h
External declaration for helptext initialized in wnhelp.c.
wnrtl.h
External declarations for global variables and flags used and set by the WordNet library functions at run-time.
wntypes.h
C typedefs for data structures used in library.

NOTES

All library functions that access the database files expect the files to be open. The function wninit(3WN) must be called before other database access functions such as findtheinfo(3WN) or read_synset(3WN).

Inclusion of the header file wn.h is usually sufficient, as it includes several other WordNet header files.

The command line interface is a good example of a simple application that uses several WordNet library functions.

Many of the library functions are passed or return syntactic category or synset type information. The following table lists the possible categories as integer codes, synset type constant names, syntactic category constant names, single characters and character strings.

center box ; c | c | c | c | c c | l | l | c | l. Integer Synset Type Syntactic Category Char String _ 1 NOUN NOUN n noun 2 VERB VERB v verb 3 ADJ ADJ a adj 4 ADV ADV r adv 5 SATELLITE ADJ s n/a

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

WNHOME
Base directory for WordNet. Unix default is /usr/local/WordNet-2.0, Windows default is C:\Program~Files\WordNet\2.0.
WNSEARCHDIR
Directory in which the WordNet database has been installed. Unix default is WNHOME/dict, Windows default is WNHOME\dict.

FILES

WNHOME/lib/libwn.a
WordNet library (Unix)
WNHOME\lib\wn.lib
WordNet library (Windows)
WNHOME/include/*
header files for use with WordNet library (Unix)
WNHOME\include\*
header files for use with WordNet library (Windows)

SEE ALSO

wnintro(1WN), binsrch(3WN), morph(3WN), wnsearch(3WN), wnutil(3WN), wnintro(5WN), wnintro(7WN).

Fellbaum, C. (1998), ed. "WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database". MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

BUGS

Please report bugs to wordnet@princeton.edu.