Converting arbitrary strings into numeric representations to facilitate complex comparisons
First Claim
1. A computer implemented method for converting a document character string having a sequential order into a corresponding numerical representation, said document character string comprising a plurality of characters chosen from a group consisting of numbers, letters and punctuation, said method comprising:
- converting each of said plurality of characters of said document character string to a plurality of corresponding numeric representations from a character encoding scheme while maintaining the sequential integrity of said sequential order of said characters in said document character string;
converting each of said corresponding numeric representations from a character encoding scheme to a plurality of corresponding fixed length integers while maintaining said sequential order of said characters in said document character string;
creating an integer equivalent of said document character string by concatenating said plurality of fixed length integers into a single integer;
grouping a predetermined number of said fixed length integers from said integer equivalent to create a fixed length primitive numeric string, said fixed length integers taken in sequential order from said integer equivalent so as to correspond to characters in said sequential order in said document character string; and
storing said fixed length primitive numeric string in memory in a manner consistent with maintaining said sequential order of said characters in said document character string.
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Accused Products
Abstract
The present invention provides a method for converting arbitrary strings consisting of any combination of numbers, digits, or punctuation into numerical representations for comparisons at run time or any other time using a data store such as a relational database or full text search engine. The method is designed to build a numeric representation having small, fixed length values that are stored in numeric data types supported by the data store. All arbitrary string data is converted to a numeric representation using the method and placed in the data store. Queries of the data can be converted to a similar numeric representation. This facilitates complex comparisons such as field_1>‘abc’.
25 Citations
16 Claims
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1. A computer implemented method for converting a document character string having a sequential order into a corresponding numerical representation, said document character string comprising a plurality of characters chosen from a group consisting of numbers, letters and punctuation, said method comprising:
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converting each of said plurality of characters of said document character string to a plurality of corresponding numeric representations from a character encoding scheme while maintaining the sequential integrity of said sequential order of said characters in said document character string; converting each of said corresponding numeric representations from a character encoding scheme to a plurality of corresponding fixed length integers while maintaining said sequential order of said characters in said document character string; creating an integer equivalent of said document character string by concatenating said plurality of fixed length integers into a single integer; grouping a predetermined number of said fixed length integers from said integer equivalent to create a fixed length primitive numeric string, said fixed length integers taken in sequential order from said integer equivalent so as to correspond to characters in said sequential order in said document character string; and storing said fixed length primitive numeric string in memory in a manner consistent with maintaining said sequential order of said characters in said document character string. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
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15. A computer implemented method for converting a document character string into a numerical string representation, said document character string comprising a plurality of characters chosen from a group consisting of numbers, letters and punctuation, said method comprising:
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converting each of said plurality of characters to a plurality of corresponding first document equivalent characters; converting each of said plurality of corresponding first equivalent characters to a plurality of corresponding second document equivalent characters by adding a constant to each of said first document equivalent characters; grouping a number of said second document equivalent characters into a document string representation, each document string representation having a predetermined number of second document equivalent characters; and storing said document string representation in memory. - View Dependent Claims (16)
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Specification