[Info-vax] Looking for some text search ideas

[David Froble]

Paul Sture wrote:
> On 2014-09-27, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> Craig A. Berry wrote:
> 
>>> A good regular expression engine would run circles around INSTR in both
>>> functionality and performance. A full text search engine would too, and
>>> if the data are simple, you could build your own with only moderate
>>> trouble that indexed words (or characters if you wish) and saved either
>>> unique key values or RFAs to get from the search string back to the
>>> containing record(s).
>>>
>> Not RMS, but similar.  The product file is just records with 50-60 data 
>> fields.  Primary key is Mfg code + Part #.  Part description is not 
>> keyed.  No good reason to do so.  Briggs may call a part "Gasket, head" 
>> while Kohler may call a similar part "Head gasket".  Not worth trying 
>> for any type of keying.  Thus my conjecture that a brute force pass 
>> through all the descriptions is about that can be done.
> 
> The problem with a brute force search comes when the user doesn't know
> that Briggs' convention is "Gasket, head" and expects to get a result by
> searching on "head gasket".  Does your brute force solution insist that
> the customer gets the comma in the right place too?

My suggestion for that was to allow multiple search strings, for 
example, "head" and "gasket", or perhaps "head" or "gasket".

I honestly don't think this thing is going to be very useful.  But if it 
isn't a large effort, then giving people what they ask for is prudent. 
Let them figure out their idea is bogus.  They won't believe you when 
you tell them.