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dtSearch Text Retrieval Engine Programmer's Reference
Stemming

Stemming extends a search to cover grammatical variations on a word.

For example, a search for fish would also find fishing. A search for applied would also find applying, applies, and apply. There are two ways to add stemming to your searches: 

1. Set the dtsSearchStemming search flag to enable stemming for all of the words in your search request. Stemming does not slow searches noticeably and is almost always helpful in making sure you find what you want. 

2. If you want to add stemming selectively, add a ~ at the end of words that you want stemmed in a search. Example: apply~ 

The stemming rules included with dtSearch are designed to work with the English language. These rules are in the file STEMMING.DAT. If you need to implement stemming for a different language, or if you want to modify the English stemming rules that dtSearch uses, you can create a new set of stemming rules to be used in place of STEMMING.DAT. See the STEMMING.DAT file for more information about how to do this.