`Ctrl`+`K`

# 7.8.1. Summary

Groonga has tokenizer module that tokenizes text. It is used when the following cases:

> - Indexing text

>   Tokenizer is used when indexing text.

> - Searching by query

>   Tokenizer is used when searching by query.

Tokenizer is an important module for full-text search. You can change trade-off between precision and recall by changing tokenizer.

Normally, TokenBigram is a suitable tokenizer. If you don’t know much about tokenizer, it’s recommended that you choose TokenBigram.

You can try a tokenizer by tokenize and table_tokenize. Here is an example to try TokenBigram tokenizer by tokenize:

Execution example:

    tokenize TokenBigram "Hello World"
    # [
    #   [
    #     0,
    #     1337566253.89858,
    #     0.000355720520019531
    #   ],
    #   [
    #     {
    #       "position": 0,
    #       "force_prefix": false,
    #       "value": "He"
    #     },
    #     {
    #       "position": 1,
    #       "force_prefix": false,
    #       "value": "el"
    #     },
    #     {
    #       "position": 2,
    #       "force_prefix": false,
    #       "value": "ll"
    #     },
    #     {
    #       "position": 3,
    #       "force_prefix": false,
    #       "value": "lo"
    #     },
    #     {
    #       "position": 4,
    #       "force_prefix": false,
    #       "value": "o "
    #     },
    #     {
    #       "position": 5,
    #       "force_prefix": false,
    #       "value": " W"
    #     },
    #     {
    #       "position": 6,
    #       "force_prefix": false,
    #       "value": "Wo"
    #     },
    #     {
    #       "position": 7,
    #       "force_prefix": false,
    #       "value": "or"
    #     },
    #     {
    #       "position": 8,
    #       "force_prefix": false,
    #       "value": "rl"
    #     },
    #     {
    #       "position": 9,
    #       "force_prefix": false,
    #       "value": "ld"
    #     },
    #     {
    #       "position": 10,
    #       "force_prefix": false,
    #       "value": "d"
    #     }
    #   ]
    # ]

“tokenize” is the process that extracts zero or more tokens from a text. There are some “tokenize” methods.

For example, `Hello World` is tokenized to the following tokens by bigram tokenize method:

> - `He`

> - `el`

> - `ll`

> - `lo`

> - `o_` (`_` means a white-space)

> - `_W` (`_` means a white-space)

> - `Wo`

> - `or`

> - `rl`

> - `ld`

In the above example, 10 tokens are extracted from one text `Hello World`.

For example, `Hello World` is tokenized to the following tokens by white-space-separate tokenize method:

> - `Hello`

> - `World`

In the above example, 2 tokens are extracted from one text `Hello World`.

Token is used as search key. You can find indexed documents only by tokens that are extracted by used tokenize method. For example, you can find `Hello World` by `ll` with bigram tokenize method but you can’t find `Hello World` by `ll` with white-space-separate tokenize method. Because white-space-separate tokenize method doesn’t extract `ll` token. It just extracts `Hello` and `World` tokens.

In general, tokenize method that generates small tokens increases recall but decreases precision. Tokenize method that generates large tokens increases precision but decreases recall.

For example, we can find `Hello World` and `A or B` by `or` with bigram tokenize method. `Hello World` is a noise for people who wants to search “logical and”. It means that precision is decreased. But recall is increased.

We can find only `A or B` by `or` with white-space-separate tokenize method. Because `World` is tokenized to one token `World` with white-space-separate tokenize method. It means that precision is increased for people who wants to search “logical and”. But recall is decreased because `Hello World` that contains `or` isn’t found.