Text Search Parsers

This topic describes the types of tokens the Greenplum Database text search parser produces from raw text.

Text search parsers are responsible for splitting raw document text into tokens and identifying each token's type, where the set of possible types is defined by the parser itself. Note that a parser does not modify the text at all — it simply identifies plausible word boundaries. Because of this limited scope, there is less need for application-specific custom parsers than there is for custom dictionaries. At present Greenplum Database provides just one built-in parser, which has been found to be useful for a wide range of applications.

The built-in parser is named pg_catalog.default. It recognizes 23 token types, shown in the following table.

Alias	Description	Example
asciiword	Word, all ASCII letters	elephant
word	Word, all letters	mañana
numword	Word, letters and digits	beta1
asciihword	Hyphenated word, all ASCII	up-to-date
hword	Hyphenated word, all letters	lógico-matemática
numhword	Hyphenated word, letters and digits	postgresql-beta1
hword_asciipart	Hyphenated word part, all ASCII	postgresql in the context postgresql-beta1
hword_part	Hyphenated word part, all letters	lógico or matemática in the context lógico-matemática
hword_numpart	Hyphenated word part, letters and digits	beta1 in the context postgresql-beta1
email	Email address	[email protected]
protocol	Protocol head	http://
url	URL	example.com/stuff/index.html
host	Host	example.com
url_path	URL path	/stuff/index.html, in the context of a URL
file	File or path name	/usr/local/foo.txt, if not within a URL
sfloat	Scientific notation	-1.234e56
float	Decimal notation	-1.234
int	Signed integer	-1234
uint	Unsigned integer	1234
version	Version number	8.3.0
tag	XML tag	<a href="dictionaries.html">
entity	XML entity	&amp;
blank	Space symbols	(any whitespace or punctuation not otherwise recognized)

Note

The parser's notion of a "letter" is determined by the database's locale setting, specifically lc_ctype. Words containing only the basic ASCII letters are reported as a separate token type, since it is sometimes useful to distinguish them. In most European languages, token types word and asciiword should be treated alike.

email does not support all valid email characters as defined by RFC 5322. Specifically, the only non-alphanumeric characters supported for email user names are period, dash, and underscore.

It is possible for the parser to produce overlapping tokens from the same piece of text. As an example, a hyphenated word will be reported both as the entire word and as each component:

SELECT alias, description, token FROM ts_debug('foo-bar-beta1');
      alias      |               description                |     token     
-----------------+------------------------------------------+---------------
 numhword        | Hyphenated word, letters and digits      | foo-bar-beta1
 hword_asciipart | Hyphenated word part, all ASCII          | foo
 blank           | Space symbols                            | -
 hword_asciipart | Hyphenated word part, all ASCII          | bar
 blank           | Space symbols                            | -
 hword_numpart   | Hyphenated word part, letters and digits | beta1

This behavior is desirable since it allows searches to work for both the whole compound word and for components. Here is another instructive example:

SELECT alias, description, token FROM ts_debug('http://example.com/stuff/index.html');
  alias   |  description  |            token             
----------+---------------+------------------------------
 protocol | Protocol head | http://
 url      | URL           | example.com/stuff/index.html
 host     | Host          | example.com
 url_path | URL path      | /stuff/index.html

Parent topic: Using Full Text Search