Text Processing

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What Does Text Processing Mean?

In computing, text processing is the automated mechanization of the creation or modification of electronic text. Computer commands are usually involved in text processing, which help in creating new content or bringing changes to content, searching or replacing content, formatting the content or generating a refined report of the content.

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Techopedia Explains Text Processing

Text processing is focused on textual characters at the highest computing level. In other words, text processing is concerned with automatic transmission of information. Unlike an algorithm, text processing can be considered as sequentially administered macros which are simpler in nature, have filtering techniques and look into pattern-action expressions.

Text processing should not be confused with word processing. The key differences are text processing deals with text processing utilities rather than text editing utilities. Text processing is sequential in approach instead of random access and works directly at the presentation layer and indirectly on the application layer. Unlike word processing, text processing operates on raw data and is more independent from proprietary techniques. Text processing is done with the help of a shell command or a text editor.

In the computing world text processing is mostly used for creating news articles, books and magazines. Text processing also does not store the source documents in a specific processor format, and helps in opening doors to new add-ons and functionalities, such as translators and parsers.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.