snowball
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Description:
Stemming algorithms
Type: Formula  |  Tracked Since: Dec 28, 2025
Links: Homepage  |  formulae.brew.sh
Category: Developer tools
Tags: stemming nlp text-processing information-retrieval algorithm
Install: brew install snowball
About:
Snowball is a framework for creating stemming algorithms, primarily used in information retrieval and text processing. It provides a compiler and a series of highly optimized algorithms for various languages. Its main value proposition is offering a fast, robust, and standardized method for reducing words to their root form.
Key Features:
  • Compiler for creating stemming algorithms
  • Optimized algorithms for multiple languages
  • Lightweight and high-performance implementation
  • Standard for academic and commercial search engines
Use Cases:
  • Building search engine indexing pipelines
  • Improving keyword analysis in NLP applications
  • Text mining and document clustering
Alternatives:
  • Porter Stemmer – Snowball implements the Porter algorithm and extends it with more languages and improvements.
  • NLTK Stemmers – NLTK provides stemming in Python, often using Snowball as the backend engine.
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