AN EFFICIENT ALGORITHM FOR FULL-TEXT RETRIEVAL FOR MULTIPLE KEYWORDS

Text retrieval methods have attracted much interest recently. There ar e numerous applications involving storage and retrieval of textural da ta: electronic office filing, computerized libraries, automated law, a nd so on. A well-known and simple approach of searching texts is full text retrieval using signature files, but the method cannot apply mult iple keywords. This paper presents a fast retrieval algorithm for mult iple keywords by using the characteristics of multiple signatures. The objective of this approach is to decrease the number of comparisons b etween multiple signatures. From the simulation result for OR and AND- OR operations and for less than 40 keywords, it is shown that the pres ented algorithm is from two to six times faster than the traditional a lgorithm. (C) Elsevier Science Inc. 1998.