NAME
Text::Util::Chinese - A collection of subroutines for processing
Chinese Text
DESCRIPTIONS
The subroutines provided by this module are for processing Chinese
text. Conventionally, all input strings are assumed to be
wide-characters. No `decode_utf8` or `utf8::decode` were done in this
module. Users of this module should deal with input-decoding first
before passing values to these subroutines.
Given the fact that corpus files are usually large, it may be a good
idea to avoid slurping the entire input stream. Conventionally,
subroutines in this modules accept "input iterator" as its way to
receive a small piece of corpus at a time. The "input iterator" is a
CodeRef that returns a string every time it is called, or undef if
there are nothing more to be processed. Here's a trivial example to
open a file as an input iterator:
sub open_as_iterator {
my ($path) = @_
open my $fh, '<', $path;
return sub {
my $line = <$fh>;
return undef unless defined($line);
return decode_utf8($line);
}
}
my $input_iter = open_as_iterator("/data/corpus.txt");
This $input_iter can be then passed as arguments to different
subroutines.
Although in the rest of this document, `Iter` is used as a Type
notation for iterators. It is the same as a CODE reference.
EXPORTED SUBROUTINES
word_iterator( $input_iter ) #=> Iter
This extracts words from Chinese text. A word in Chinese text is a
token with N charaters. These N characters is often used together in
the input and therefore should be a meaningful unit.
The input parameter is a iterator -- a subroutine that must return a
string of Chinese text each time it is invoked. Or, when the input is
exhausted, it must return undef. For example:
open my $fh, '<', 'book.txt';
my $word_iter = word_iterator(
sub {
my $x = <$fh>;
return decode_utf8 $x;
});
The type of return value is Iter (CODE ref).
extract_words( $input_iter ) #=> ArrayRef[Str]
This does the same thing as word_iterator, but retruns the exhausted
list instead of iterator.
For example:
open my $fh, '<', 'book.txt';
my $words = extract_words(
sub {
my $x = <$fh>;
return decode_utf8 $x;
});
The type of return value is ArrayRef[Str].
It is likely that this subroutine returns an empty ArrayRef with no
contents. It is only useful when the volume of input is a leats a few
thousands of characters. The more, the better.
presuf_iterator( $input_iter, $opts) #=> Iter
This subroutine extract meaningful tokens that are prefix or suffix
of input.
The 2nd argument $opts is a HashRef with parameters threshold and
lengths. threshold should be an Int, lengths should be an
ArrayRef[Int] and that constraints the lengths of prefixes and
suffixes to be extracted.
The default value for threshold is 9, while the default value for
lengths is [2,3]
extract_presuf( $input_iter, $opts ) #=> ArrayRef[Str]
Similar to presuf_iterator, but returns a ArrayRef[Str] instead.
sentence_iterator( $input_iter ) #=> Iter
This subroutine split input into sentences. It takes an text
iterator, and returns another one.
phrase_iterator( $input_iter ) #=> Iter
This subroutine split input into smallelr phrases. It takes an text
iterator, and returns another one.
tokenize_by_script( $text ) #=> Array[ Str ]
This subroutine split text into tokens, where each token is the same
writing script.
looks_like_simplified_chinese( $text ) #=> Bool
This subroutine does a naive test on the input $text and returns true
if $text looks like it is written in Simplified Chinese.
AUTHOR
Kang-min Liu <gugod@gugod.org>
LICENSE
Unlicense https://unlicense.org/