JP2810893B2 - Word dictionary search device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Application Field] The present invention estimates a correct character from a recognition candidate character obtained as an output from a character recognition device. The present invention relates to a word dictionary search device for searching for.

[Related Art] When a character recognition device recognizes one character, it outputs a plurality of recognition candidate characters. Either one correct character is included in the recognition candidate characters, or no correct character is included at all. That is, most of the recognition candidate characters are not correct characters. For example, in the case of a character recognition device that outputs 16 recognition candidate characters for one character, at least 15 recognition candidate characters are not correct characters. In addition, since the character recognition device outputs candidate characters having similar shapes, naturally, recognition candidate characters include many characters that do not form words.

In contrast to such a character recognition device, the conventional word dictionary search device is configured to always search the word dictionary using each recognition candidate character as search key data, so the number of redundant dictionary searches increases, This has been a major cause of significantly lowering the performance of estimating correct characters from recognition candidate characters.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] It is an object of the present invention to provide a word dictionary search device that reduces the number of redundant dictionary searches and shortens a word search time.

Means for Solving the Problems In order to solve the above means, the present invention includes a character recognition device, a computer, and a word dictionary search device, and the word dictionary unit in the word dictionary search device stores words. And a second storage area storing character position data that appears in each word for all the characters to be used,
Further, a table memory for storing data in the second storage area, a dictionary access determining unit, and a word counting unit are provided.

[Operation] Since the present invention performs character recognition using the above-described means, when searching for a word stored in a word dictionary, the code of the recognized character and the data of the position where the character appears appear in the word dictionary. The dictionary is sent to the search device and the dictionary access determination unit determines whether to search the dictionary with reference to the contents of the table memory. Further, the number of searched words is counted by the word counting unit, and if there is no word having the recognized character at the designated character appearance position, the contents of the table memory are updated, and the word having the recognized character at the designated position is replaced with the word. It is possible to determine whether or not it is stored in a dictionary before searching. If it is determined that there is no corresponding word, the dictionary search is stopped, thereby reducing redundant dictionary searches.

Embodiment FIG. 1 is a diagram for explaining an embodiment of the present invention, wherein 1 is a character recognition device, 2 is a computer, 3 is a word dictionary search device, 31 is a word dictionary unit, 32 is a dictionary access control unit, 33 is a table memory, 34 is a key information storage unit, 35 is a dictionary access determination unit,
36 is a buffer memory, 37 is a word counting unit, and 38 is an interface unit.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the configuration of the word dictionary unit 31, where 311 is a management information storage area, and 312 is a word storage area.

FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining the configuration of the table memory 33.

Before describing the operation of the present invention, first, the configuration of the table memory 33 and the data format in the management information storage area 311 of the word dictionary unit 31 will be described. In this embodiment, for convenience of explanation, the character code used is a kanji code specified by JIS. However, the target character code is not limited to the code specified in JIS,
It may be a character code defined by another system or a character code defined by a subset thereof.

The table memory 33 is composed of a rewritable memory having the number of bytes equal to the number of kanji codes specified by JIS, and its addresses are made to correspond one-to-one to kanji codes. on the other hand,
The word dictionary unit 31 is configured by a large-capacity storage device such as a disk device, and the management information storage area 311 has an address configuration that can correspond to the address of the table memory 33 on a one-to-one basis. The P-th bit of the address corresponding to the character M is set to the “ON” state according to the character M that appears for the word “.

As shown in FIG. 3, a case where the word “Tokyo” is stored in the word storage area 312 will be described as an example. To explain the case, the address of the table memory 33 corresponding to “East” at the first character position is described. The first bit, the second bit of the address corresponding to the second “K”, and the third bit of the address corresponding to the third “To” are turned “ON”, respectively.

If the word having the capital "tsuto" as the fourth character is not stored in the word dictionary section, the fourth character of the address corresponding to "capita" is stored.
The bit is turned off.

When a new word is stored in the word storage area 312, the data in the management information storage area 311 is also updated.

 Hereinafter, the operation will be described.

The computer 2 issues an initialization command to the word dictionary search device 3, the interface unit 38 instructs the dictionary access control unit 32 to read data in the management information storage area 311 of the word dictionary unit 31, and the dictionary access control unit 32 Write the read data to the table memory 33.

Next, the computer 2 receives the recognition candidate character from the character recognition device 1, sends the code (M) and the appearance character position (P) of a certain recognition candidate character to the word dictionary search device 3, and sends a word search command. Emits.

Next, the word dictionary search device 3 operates. The interface unit 38 receives the character code M and the data P of the appearance character position, and writes it in the key information storage unit 34. The dictionary access determining unit 35 receives the character code M and the appearance character position data P from the key information storage unit 34, reads the data of the address of the table memory 33 corresponding to the character code M, and checks the state of the P-th bit flag. At this time, the flag status is “O
If “N”, the character code M is transmitted to the dictionary access control unit 32.
Then, a word search command is issued, and if the state of the flag is "OFF", information indicating that there is no corresponding word is notified to the computer 2 via the interface unit 38.

When the dictionary access control unit 32 receives the character code M and the appearance character position data P from the dictionary access determination unit 35, it reads the corresponding word from the word storage area 312 of the word dictionary unit 31 and writes it to the buffer memory 36.

Next, the word counting unit 37 operates, counts the number of words written in the buffer memory 36, and notifies the computer 2 of the result via the interface unit 38. At this time, if the counting result is "0" (that is, there is no corresponding word), the character code M and the appearance character position data P are received from the key information storage unit 34, and the flag of the table memory 33 determined by M and P is set. Rewrite to “OFF” state.

Upon receiving the result from the word counting unit 37, the computer 2 reads the data in the buffer memory 36 via the interface unit 38 and makes a next search request to the word dictionary search device 3.

In the above operation, the computer 2 performs a dictionary search a required number of times and then issues an end command. The dictionary access control unit 32 writes the data of the table memory 33 into the management information storage area 311 of the word dictionary unit 31 and then terminates. I do.

In the above description, at the time of initial setting, the table memory 33
All flags are set to “ON”, and as the word search progresses, if the relevant word is not found as a result of determining the code of the recognized character and the character appearance position, the flag is rewritten to “OFF” The management information storage area 311
It is self-evident that the configuration for learning the data can be adopted.

Further, the configuration of the table memory 33 is based on the fact that the number of characters constituting one word is 8 words or less,
One byte is assigned to one character code. However, if it is necessary to handle words having a longer number of characters, the required memory capacity increases. For example, a table memory can be configured by allocating 2 bytes to process words of up to 16 characters. .

[Effects of the Invention] As is clear from the above description, in the present invention,
Since a word search using a character that does not form a word stored in the word dictionary unit 31 as a search key can be eliminated, the number of redundant dictionary searches can be significantly reduced, and the word search time can be reduced. Therefore, there is an advantage that the time required for estimating the correct character by word collation from many recognition candidate characters can be greatly reduced.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of a word dictionary search device of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining a configuration of a word dictionary unit 31, and FIG.
The figure illustrates the configuration of the table memory 33. DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Character recognition device, 2 ... Computer, 3 ... Word dictionary search device, 31 ... Word dictionary unit, 32 ... Dictionary access control unit, 33 ... Table memory, 34 ... Key information storage unit, 35 ... Dictionary access judging section, 36 buffer memory, 37 word counting section, 38 interface section, 311 management information storage area, 312 word storage area.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continuation of front page (72) Inventor Atsuko Kurihara 1-26-5 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo Inside NTT Data Communication Corporation (56) References JP-A-60-147888 (JP) , A) (58) Field surveyed (Int. Cl. ⁶ , DB name) G06F 17/30 G06K 9/72

Claims (6)

(57) [Claims] 1. A set of N character codes {C ₁ , C ₂ ,.
..In a word dictionary search device for searching for a word formed by a combination of elements of C _N ｝, a specified character code Ci
A first storage area for storing words so that a search for a word having (1 ≦ i ≦ N) as the m-th (1 ≦ m) character is possible, and a word stored in the first storage area A word dictionary unit having a second storage area for storing management information for managing in which character position the N character codes appear; and a dictionary access control unit for controlling data input / output of the word dictionary unit. A table memory for storing data in the second storage area of the word dictionary section read via the dictionary access control section, and search key data including a character code and character position information where the character code appears. A key information storage unit, a dictionary access determination unit that refers to the data in the table memory with the search key data stored in the key information storage unit, and determines whether or not the corresponding word is stored in the word dictionary unit; A buffer memory for storing words read via the access control unit, and accessing the table memory with the search key data stored in the key information storage unit based on the result of counting the number of words stored in the buffer memory. A word dictionary search device, comprising: a word counting unit for rewriting the data of the word dictionary; and an interface unit for controlling data input / output with an external device. 2. A first storage unit for storing a plurality of words each formed by a combination of a plurality of characters, and in each of the words stored in the first storage unit, where each character appears. A second storage unit for storing management information for managing the information, an input unit for inputting a search target language, and a search target word input by the input unit according to the management information stored in the second storage unit. Determination means for determining whether or not a word having the character at a position corresponding to the position within the search target word is stored in the first storage unit; and When it is determined that
A word dictionary search, comprising: search means for searching for a corresponding word from words stored in the first storage unit and stopping the search when it is determined that the word is not stored. apparatus. 3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the determining unit stores a word having the character at a position corresponding to a position of the character in the search target word in the first storage unit. Reading means for reading out a corresponding word when it is determined that the word is present. The searching means includes a word corresponding to the search target character word from words read from the first storage unit by the reading means. The word dictionary search device according to claim 2, wherein: 4. The search means, when it is determined that the data is stored by the determination means,
Reading means for searching the first storage unit and reading out the corresponding word; counting means for counting the number of words read by the reading means; and when the counting result is 0 by the counting means, the second Updating means for updating the information stored in the storage unit of the first storage unit to information indicating that a word having the character at the corresponding character position is not stored in the first storage unit. Claim 2 or Claim 3
The word dictionary search device described in 1. 5. The word dictionary search device according to claim 2, wherein the search target word is constituted by a recognition target character string supplied from a character recognition device. 6. A first storage unit for storing a plurality of words composed of a plurality of characters, and a table corresponding to each character, wherein a word stored in the first storage unit is used to construct the word. A second storage unit that sets and stores the position of each character to be set in the table, an information input unit that inputs information on an arbitrary character constituting the word to be searched and the position of the character in the word, A key information storage unit for storing information input from an information input unit as key information; and comparing key information stored in the key information storage unit with a table stored in the second storage unit; A dictionary access determining unit that determines whether a character and a position indicated by information are set in a table stored in the second storage unit, wherein the dictionary access determining unit determines that the character and the position indicated by the key information are The second When it is determined that the key information is set in the table stored in the storage unit, a dictionary access unit that matches the key information with a word stored in the first storage unit, A word output unit that outputs a word having a character that matches the character and position indicated by the key information; and the dictionary access determination unit stores the character and position indicated by the key information in the second storage unit. And a control unit for stopping the search when it is determined that the search is not set in the table.