[Bug 305407] [NEW] Bug in morphstr() function of packaged wordnet.lib

[Sundaram]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: wordnet

Hi,
I am working on Wordnet for a particular project. I installed Wordnet in Ubuntu via Synaptic, the latest package to date. Tried searching "automata" in the Wordnet Browser (bash-command: wnb), it returned 0 results, while the installed Wordnet in Windows (installer from Wordnet's site) shows a couple of definitions for "automata". In fact, the latest version of Wordnet for Windows is just 2.1 while Linux's is 3.0.

Bascially, Wordnet's function morphstr() is supposed to give the root
words for a given inflected word. For example, when "knifes" is given to
morphstr, it returns "knife". Likewise for "axes" it should return "ax",
"axe" and "axis". It first searches an exceptions list file (because of
peculiar cases like axes), when it has an entry in it, it returns the
file's results. If not found in the list, it tries to predict the root.
While the prediction part (e.g. knifes) works fine in Ubuntu, the search
from file part doesn't (e.g. axes, automata, etc.)

When I compared the source code of Wordnet (morph.c of Windows and
Linux), its the same for both the OSs (they have just used preprocessor
switches for the differences). This needs to be fixed from our side,
since Wordnet's source code doesn't have any errors/diffs, as the same
code is present on both the OSs. The Windows installer was packaged by
Wordnet guys themselves, while the deb was packaged from their source by
someone of Ubuntu/Deb guys, I guess.

PS: When I wrote my own code, and tried using morphstr(), I could spot
the error with Ubuntu's packaged wordnet.lib. The problem is that,
morphstr takes two args; 1: inflected word, 2: POS (Part of Speech -
NOUN, VERB, etc.) E,g. morphstr("knifes", NOUN); will return "knifes"
using the prediction technique (works right in Ubuntu). When I call
morphstr("automata", NOUN) it returns NULL but when I call
morphstr("automata", NOUN - 1); it returns "automata". Likewise, for any
word, which has an exception in the exception list file, when we pass
the actual POS value minus 1, we get the proper values. It has some
array indexing issue, I believe. The reason why Wordnet Browser doesn't
show "automata"'s definitions in Linux is that morphstr() when called
with proper POS value returns NULL, while in Windows, it returns correct
values for the same set of arguments, so Wordnet Browser in Windows
shows it.

** Affects: wordnet (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

-- 
Bug in morphstr() function of packaged wordnet.lib
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/305407
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