   _     _                                     _   _          
  | |   (_)_ __   __ _ _   _  __ _   _ _      | | / \     _ _ 
  | |   | | '_ \ / _` | | | |/ _` | (_|_)  _  | |/ _ \   (_|_)
  | |___| | | | | (_| | |_| | (_| |  _ _  | |_| / ___ \   _ _ 
  |_____|_|_| |_|\__, |\__,_|\__,_| (_|_)  \___/_/   \_\ (_|_)
                 |___/                                        
   _____ _           _ ____        _            
  |  ___(_)_ __   __| |  _ \  __ _| |_ ___  ___ 
  | |_  | | '_ \ / _` | | | |/ _` | __/ _ \/ __|
  |  _| | | | | | (_| | |_| | (_| | ||  __/\__ \
  |_|   |_|_| |_|\__,_|____/ \__,_|\__\___||___/
                                                


This is the README for Lingua::JA::FindDates version 0.020.

Lingua::JA::FindDates is a "module" for the Perl computer programming language,
a library of computer code to install on a computer.  This document contains
four sections:

1. About - what the module does

2. Documentation - how to learn more about the module

3. Installation - how to install this module on a computer

4. Help - what to do if you get stuck

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1. ABOUT

Lingua::JA::FindDates - scan text to find dates in a Japanese format

This module offers pattern matching of dates in the Japanese
language. Its main routine, "subsjdate" scans a text and finds
things which appear to be Japanese dates.

The module recognizes the typical format of dates with the year first,
followed by the month, then the day, such as 平成20年七月十日
"(Heisei nijūnen shichigatsu tōka)". It also recognizes combinations
such as years alone, years and months, a month and day without a year,
fiscal years (年度, "nendo"), parts of the month, like 中旬 (chūjun,
the middle of the month), and periods between two dates.

It recognizes both the Japanese-style era-base year format, such as 
"平成２４年" (Heisei) for the current era, and European-style Christian
era year format, such as 2012年. It recognizes several forms of
numerals, including the ordinary ASCII numerals, 1, 2, 3; the "wide"
or "double width" numerals sometimes used in Japan, １, ２, ３; and
the kanji-based numeral system, 一, 二, 三. It recognizes some special
date formats such as 元年 for the first year of an era. It recognizes
era names identified by their initial letters, such as S41年 for Shōwa
41 (1966). It recognizes dates regardless of any spacing which might
be inserted between individual Japanese characters, such as 
"平 成 二 十 年 八 月".

The input text must be marked as Unicode, in other words character
data, not byte data.

The module has been tested on several hundreds of documents, and it
should cope with all common Japanese dates. If you find that it cannot
identify some kind of date within Japanese text, please report that as
a bug.

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2. DOCUMENTATION

You can read the documentation for the module online at the following websites:

    * http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Lingua::JA::FindDates
    * http://metacpan.org/release/Lingua-JA-FindDates

(These links go to the latest version of the module.)

After installing the module, you can read the documentation on your computer
using

    perldoc Lingua::JA::FindDates

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3. INSTALLATION

This module requires Perl version 5.1.1 or later.

To install the module from CPAN, use

    cpan Lingua::JA::FindDates

If you have the App::cpanminus installer, you may prefer

    cpanm Lingua::JA::FindDates

To install the module from the source file, Lingua-JA-FindDates-0.020.tar.gz,
follow this sequence of commands:

    tar xfz Lingua-JA-FindDates-0.020.tar.gz
    cd Lingua-JA-FindDates-0.020
    perl Makefile.PL
    make
    make install

If you want to test the module before installing it, use "make test" after
"make" and before "make install".

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4. HELP

To get help with the module, you can email the author, Ben Bullock, at
<bkb@cpan.org>. If you think there is a problem in the module, you can report a
bug at 

<https://github.com/benkasminbullock/Lingua--JA--FindDates/issues>,

or if you want to alter the source code of Lingua::JA::FindDates, try the
public repository on github at 

<https://github.com/benkasminbullock/Lingua--JA--FindDates>. 

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This README was written on Wed Feb  5 23:43:06 2014.

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