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.