fst-infl(1)

✨ fst-match ✨

okay bestie, so this is the page for fst-infl (manual section 1, the "fst-match" one) and honestly? it's a little baddie 💅 it does exactly one thing and it does it so well. sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, let's get into it.

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🎀 NAME 🎀

fst-match — longest match analyser 🦋

like, it matches. the longest one. that's the whole vibe.

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

fst-match [ options ] file [ input-file [ output-file ] ]

three-ish little slots, one tiny tool, we love a low-maintenance icon 👑

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

• -q — suppress status messages. she goes quiet. no thoughts, just vibes 🤫
• -h — print usage information. she tells you how to use her, very helpful, very demure ✨

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so fst-match is a longest match analyser, periodt. here's the lineup of what you hand her:

• the first argument is the name of a compact transducer file — and bestie, it has to have been generated by fst-compiler -c. that part matters, don't skip it 🙈
• the second argument is the name of the input file.
• the third argument is the output file.

and now the "if you're lazy" clause, which honestly? iconic:

• if the third argument is missing, output goes to stdout. no cap.
• if the second argument is missing as well, then input is read from stdin. she's flexible like that 💅

so what does she actually do? fst-match reads the argument transducer and performs a longest-match analysis of the input string. and like, let me give you the example because it's giving algorithm:

given the transducer <x>:<>ab+<x>:<>, she will analyse the string baabbca as ba<x>abb<x>ca.

the way that just works?? she ate and left no crumbs 😭🔥

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💀 BUGS 💀

if the longest match can be mapped to several target strings, only one of them is printed.

so yeah. she picks one. she does not elaborate. she does not take questions. not me being dramatic about it but that's literally what the manpage says 🙈

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

go give these girls some love too, they're all in the same friend group:

• fst-compiler
• fst-mor
• fst-infl
• fst-parse

iykyk 💜

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Helmut Schmid, Institute for Computational Linguistics, University of Stuttgart Email: schmid@ims.uni-stuttgart.de This software is available under the GNU Public License.

okay that's the whole page, you're so welcome 🫶

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and that's a wrap on the fst-match era of the fst-infl manual — dated March 2005, which is lowkey vintage of her, and honestly the fact that she's still serving longest-match realness all these years later? main character energy fr fr ⭐🧚💖