ref: 54bac038f411c10a596adf84c06df32f8c7c4c53
dir: /man/2/bloomfilter/
.TH BLOOMFILTER 2
.SH NAME
Bloomfilter \- Bloom filters
.SH SYNOPSIS
.EX
include "sets.m";
include "bloomfilter.m";
bloomfilter := load Bloomfilter Bloomfilter->PATH;
init: fn();
filter: fn(d: array of byte, logm, k: int): Sets->Set;
.EE
.SH DESCRIPTION
A Bloom filter is a method of representing a set to support probabilistic
membership queries. It uses independent hash functions of members
of the set to set elements of a bit-vector.
.I Init
should be called first to initialise the module.
.I Filter
returns a Set
.I s
representing the Bloom filter for the single-member
set
.RI { d }.
.I K
independent hash functions are used, each of range
.RI "[0, 2^" logm ),
to return a Bloom filter
.RI 2^ logm
bits wide. It is an error if
.I logm
is less than 3 or greater than 30.
.PP
Bloom filters can be combined by set union.
The set represented by Bloom filter
.I a
is not a subset of another
.I b
if there are any members in
.I a
that are not in
.IR b .
Together,
.IR logm ,
.IR k ,
and
.IR n
(the number of members in the set)
determine the
.I "false positve" rate
(the probability that a membership test will not eliminate
a member that is not in fact in the set).
The probability of a
.I "false positive"
is approximately (1-e^(-\fIkn\fP/(2^\fIlogm\fP))^\fIk\fP.
For a given false positive rate,
.IR f ,
a useful formula to determine appropriate parameters
is: \fIk\fP=ceil(-log₂(\fIf\fP)),
and \fIlogm\fP=ceil(log₂(\fInk\fP)).
.SH EXAMPLES
Create a 128 bit-wide bloom filter
.I f
representing all the elements
in the string array
.IR elems ,
with
.IR k =6.
.EX
A, B, None: import Sets;
for(i:=0; i<len elems; i++)
f = f.X(A|B, filter(array of byte elems[i], 7, 6));
.EE
Test whether the string
.I s
is a member of
.IR f .
If there were 12 elements in
.IR elems ,
the probability of a false positive would be
approximately 0.0063.
.EX
if(filter(array of byte s, 7, 6).X(A&~B, f).eq(None))
sys->print("'%s' might be a member of f\en", s);
.EE
.SH SOURCE
.B /appl/lib/bloomfilter.b
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR sets (2)