NAME

       Text::Affixes - Prefixes and suffixes analysis of text

SYNOPSIS

         use Text::Affixes;
         my $text = "Hello, world. Hello, big world.";
         my $prefixes = get_prefixes($text);

         # $prefixes now holds
         # {
         #     3 => {
         #             'Hel' => 2,
         #             'wor' => 2,
         #     }
         # }

         # or

         $prefixes = get_prefixes({min => 1, max => 2},$text);

         # $prefixes now holds
         # {
         #     1 => {
         #             'H' => 2,
         #             'w' => 2,
         #             'b' => 1,
         #     },
         #     2 => {
         #             'He' => 2,
         #             'wo' => 2,
         #             'bi' => 1,
         #     }
         # }

         # the use for get_suffixes is similar

DESCRIPTION

       Provides methods for prefix and suffix analysis of text.

METHODS

   get_prefixes
       Extracts prefixes from text. You can specify the minimum and maximum number of characters
       of prefixes you want.

       Returns a reference to a hash, where the specified limits are mapped in hashes; each of
       those hashes maps every prefix in the text into the number of times it was found.

       By default, both minimum and maximum limits are 3. If the minimum limit is greater than
       the lower one, an empty hash is returned.

       A prefix is considered to be a sequence of word characters (\w) in the beginning of a word
       (that is, after a word boundary) that does not reach the end of the word ("regular
       expressionly", a prefix is the $1 of /\b(\w+)\w/).

         # extracting prefixes of size 3
         $prefixes = get_prefixes( $text );

         # extracting prefixes of sizes 2 and 3
         $prefixes = get_prefixes( {min => 2}, $text );

         # extracting prefixes of sizes 3 and 4
         $prefixes = get_prefixes( {max => 4}, $text );

         # extracting prefixes of sizes 2, 3 and 4
         $prefixes = get_prefixes( {min => 2, max=> 4}, $text);

   get_suffixes
       The get_suffixes function is similar to the get_prefixes one. You should read the
       documentation for that one and than come back to this point.

       A suffix is considered to be a sequence of word characters (\w) in the end of a word (that
       is, before a word boundary) that does not start at the beginning of the word ("regular
       expressionly" speaking, a suffix is the $1 of /\w(\w+)\b/).

         # extracting suffixes of size 3
         $suffixes = get_suffixes( $text );

         # extracting suffixes of sizes 2 and 3
         $suffixes = get_suffixes( {min => 2}, $text );

         # extracting suffixes of sizes 3 and 4
         $suffixes = get_suffixes( {max => 4}, $text );

         # extracting suffixes of sizes 2, 3 and 4
         $suffixes = get_suffixes( {min => 2, max=> 4}, $text);

OPTIONS

       Apart from deciding on a minimum and maximum size for prefixes or suffixes, you can also
       decide on some configuration options.

   exclude_numbers
       Set to 0 if you consider numbers as part of words. Default value is 1.

         # this
         get_suffixes( {min => 1, max => 1, exclude_numbers => 0}, "Hello, but w8" );

         # returns this:
           {
             1 => {
                    'o' => 1,
                    't' => 1,
                    '8' => 1
                  }
           }

   lowercase
       Set to 1 to extract all prefixes in lowercase mode. Default value is 0.

       ATTENTION: This does not mean that prefixes with uppercased characters won't be extracted.
       It means they will be extracted after being lowercased.

         # this...
         get_prefixes( {min => 2, max => 2, lowercase => 1}, "Hello, hello");

         # returns this:
           {
             2 => {
                    'he' => 2
                  }
           }

TO DO

       •     Make it more efficient (use C for that)

AUTHOR

       Jose Castro, "<cog@cpan.org>"

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

       Copyright 2004 Jose Castro, All Rights Reserved.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.