Editing Final Report 2011 (section)

===Design===
The overall design of the pattern matching module is shown in the diagram below.

<center>[[Image:Pattern Matcher Process.png | Pattern Matcher process]]</center>
<center>'''Figure 10 - Pattern matching software operational process'''</center>

The bolded process represents the application of a search algorithm which is the key section of the pattern matcher. The following search algorithms have been designed for 2011:
* Exact
** Searches for exact sequence of characters specified (ignoring capitalisation). For example, a search for “ERER” would match “Gatherer”.
* Pattern	
** Searches for a pattern as specified by characters entered. For example, a search for “HDHD” would match both “Gatherer” and “gbhdhdk”. The reasoning for this pattern algorithm is it is able to detect simple mono-alphabetic substitution ciphers; a likely candidate for the Somerton Code.
* Initials
** Searches only initial letters. Can be implemented in conjunction with both Exact and Pattern searches (i.e. ExactInitial and PatternInitial). For example, a search for “HDHD” in PatternInitial would match “Almond bread and butter”. This was implemented because previous studies have suggested the code is likely to be an initialism.
* Regular Expression 
** Searches for any user defined Regular Expression (or Regex). A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression Regular Expression] is a concise and flexible means for matching string patterns<ref>Regular Expression, Wikipedia Foundation Inc, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression</ref>. Regexes are very powerful; alone it can implement all of the above search functions. For example, a search for “([Ee])([Rr])\2\1” would be identical to the Exact search for “ERER”. The disadvantage being the technical knowledge required to use regexes. The Regular Expression searching function takes advantage of inbuilt Java classes.

The ability to have unknown or wildcard for characters represented as “*” –asterisk- was also designed in the non-regex search functions. Java was chosen as the programming language to maintain compatibility with the other modules.