Patent Document ID: 6131092
Application ID: 08274123

Base Claim:
1. A text pattern matching system for identifying ones of a plurality of documents in a document text base which satisfy a query, each of said documents comprising a series of ordered text symbols, with each text symbol being represented by a text token, each query comprising a series of query symbols, with each query symbol being represented by a query token, said text pattern matching system comprising: A. a match token generator for generating a match token for each text token whose text symbol corresponds to a query token's query symbol, the match token generator associating each match token with (i) document identifier information identifying one of said documents containing the text symbol corresponding to the query symbol, (ii) text symbol sequence information identifying the position of the text symbol in the series of text symbols which comprise the document, and (iii) query symbol sequence information identifying the position of the query symbol in the series of query symbols which comprise the query; B. a match token sorter for sorting match tokens generated by said match token generator according to the document identifier information and the text symbol sequence information associated therewith; and C. a query processor for identifying, using the query symbol sequence information associated with the match tokens as sorted by the match token sorter, sequences of match tokens relating to a query which satisfy the query, the document identifier information of match tokens in the identified sequences of match tokens identifying the documents that satisfy the query.

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Claim 2:
2. A text pattern matching system as defined in claim 1 in which each text token and each query token further includes a symbol identifier, the symbol identifier in each text token having a value that identifies the text symbol associated therewith and the symbol identifier in each query token having a value that identifies the query symbol associated therewith, the match token generator identifying, for each query token, text tokens having symbol identifiers which correspond to the query token's symbol identifier, and generating a match token for each text token so identified.