Named Entity Recognition 25.4
Named Entity Recognition User and Programming Guide

# Select Matches

By default, Named Entity Recognition does not return all possible matches. For example, it does not return matches that overlap a previous match:

- If you have patterns for fox jumps and jumps over, the text "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" returns only the first match, because the second match overlaps it.

Named Entity Recognition returns the longest possible match at the same position. For example:

- If you have a pattern for brown fox, and one for brown fox jumps, only the second match returns.

Named Entity Recognition has configuration parameters to allow you to modify this and other matching behavior.

## Return the Smallest Match

When Named Entity Recognition finds two matches that start at the same position, it returns only one match unless you enable overlaps. By default, Named Entity Recognition returns the longer match.

You can configure it to use the shorter match by enabling `NonGreedyMatch` (see NonGreedyMatch). However, always consider whether you need to use this option, or whether you could redefine your Named Entity Recognition grammar to be more precise instead.

Generally, OpenText recommends that you make your Named Entity Recognition grammar definition as precise as possible, which reduces the chance of getting two matches at the same position. A precise Named Entity Recognition grammar is also more efficient during extraction.

## Overlapping and Duplicate Matches

You can return overlapping matches by enabling the `AllowOverlaps` parameter (see AllowOverlaps).

When the same string occurs at more than one position in the input data, by default Named Entity Recognition returns only the first match. You can allow duplicates (for example, if you need to find the positions of all occurrences) by setting the `AllowMultipleResults` parameter (see AllowMultipleResults).

If you want to return only unique matches in each document, set `EnableUniqueMatches` to `True` (see EnableUniqueMatches). Named Entity Recognition returns only a single occurrence of a particular value (the first match), even if the matches occur for different entities.

## Return Multiple Results for a Single Match

In some instances, you might want to get multiple results for a single match. For example, if a word can occur in different contexts, you might want to tag a document according to the occurrence of the word.

    <entity name="IT_industry">
       <entry headword="software">
          <synonym>CompanyA</synonym>
          <synonym>HP</synonym>
       </entry>
       <entry headword="hardware">
          <synonym>CompanyB</synonym>
          <synonym>HP</synonym>
       </entry>
    </entity>

With this entity, `CompanyA` returns `software`, while `CompanyB` returns `hardware`. A match of `HP` might return either `software` or `hardware`. If you want to use this entity to return both `software` and `hardware` for `HP`, set the `AllowMultipleResults` configuration parameter to `True` (see AllowMultipleResults).

Copyright 2013-2025 Open Text
Version 25.4 | Last updated October 2025

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Product: Knowledge Discovery Named Entity Recognition 25.4

Topic Title: Select Matches