Search-QueryParser version 1.0
==============================

This module parses a query string into a data structure to be handled
by external search engines.  For examples of such engines, see
File::Tabular and Search::Indexer.

The query string can contain simple terms, "exact phrases", field
names and comparison operators, '+/-' prefixes, parentheses, and
boolean connectors.

The parser can be parameterized by regular expressions for specific
notions of "term", "field name" or "operator" ; see the "new"
method. The parser has no support for lemmatization or other term
transformations : these should be done externally, before passing the
query data structure to the search engine.

The data structure resulting from a parsed query is a tree of terms
and operators, as described in the "parse" method.  The interpretation
of the structure is up to the external search engine that will receive
the parsed query ; the present module does not make any assumption
about what it means to be "equal" or to "contain" a term.

INSTALLATION

To install this module type the following:

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test
   make install

DEPENDENCIES

None 

RELATED MODULES

File::Tabular (management of flat text files containg data organised
in rows and columns) and Search::Indexer (full-text indexing)
make use of the present module.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (C) 2005 by Laurent Dami.

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


