Package org.apache.lucene.search.spans

The calculus of spans.

See: Description

Package org.apache.lucene.search.spans Description

The calculus of spans.

A span is a <doc,startPosition,endPosition> tuple.

The following span query operators are implemented:

In all cases, output spans are minimally inclusive. In other words, a span formed by matching a span in x and y starts at the lesser of the two starts and ends at the greater of the two ends.

For example, a span query which matches "John Kerry" within ten words of "George Bush" within the first 100 words of the document could be constructed with:

SpanQuery john   = new SpanTermQuery(new Term("content", "john"));
SpanQuery kerry  = new SpanTermQuery(new Term("content", "kerry"));
SpanQuery george = new SpanTermQuery(new Term("content", "george"));
SpanQuery bush   = new SpanTermQuery(new Term("content", "bush"));

SpanQuery johnKerry =
   new SpanNearQuery(new SpanQuery[] {john, kerry}, 0, true);

SpanQuery georgeBush =
   new SpanNearQuery(new SpanQuery[] {george, bush}, 0, true);

SpanQuery johnKerryNearGeorgeBush =
   new SpanNearQuery(new SpanQuery[] {johnKerry, georgeBush}, 10, false);

SpanQuery johnKerryNearGeorgeBushAtStart =
   new SpanFirstQuery(johnKerryNearGeorgeBush, 100);

Span queries may be freely intermixed with other Lucene queries. So, for example, the above query can be restricted to documents which also use the word "iraq" with:

Query query = new BooleanQuery();
query.add(johnKerryNearGeorgeBushAtStart, true, false);
query.add(new TermQuery("content", "iraq"), true, false);