ABSTRACT
Text retrievers retrieve words and phrases, not chunks of text. In the general computer literature, the term ‘text’ is often used to distinguish narrative material from ‘data’, which could be numbers, names, addresses, or other bits of information. Text retrievers do operate on narrative material, but it would be more accurate to call them ‘word retrievers’. Unlike data base managers, they focus on individual words and phrases (known in computer talk as ‘strings’). This characteristic also distinguishes text retrievers from qualitative analysis programs, which are meant to deal with meaningful segments of text <Qualitative analysis programs>.
