Compactly encoded stored string set and its use

摘要

A product includes a storage medium and string set data stored by the storage medium. The string set data can be accessed in a search to determine whether a string of characters is one of a set of strings. The string set data includes items of data (ADDRESSES 1-6) ordered in a sequence. Some of the items of data include label information (LABEL), next information (EOB), and alternative information (ALT). The label information (LABEL) indicates a character type. The next information (EOB) indicates whether the item of data has a next data item to which search continues if a current character in the string is an instance of the character type indicated by the label information (LABEL). The alternative information (ALT) indicates whether the item of data has an alternative data item to which search can continue if the current character in the string is not an instance of the character type indicated by the label information (LABEL). The item of data is positioned so that, if the next information (EOB) indicates that the first data item has a next data item, the next data item can be accessed (258;Fig. 11) based on the positions in the sequence of the first and next (EOB) data items. The item of data also is positioned in the sequence so that, if the alternative information (ALT) indicates that the first data item has an alternative data item, the alternative data item can be accessed (266;Fig. 11) based on the positions in the sequence of the first and alternative data items. The item of data can also include final information (FINAL) indicating whether a string of characters being matched is in the set of strings if its last character matches the label information. The item of data can be encoded in a byte (88;Fig. 5) and the string set data can also include a pointer (234;Fig. 9) to the item of data to reduce redundancy.