Creating the Stop-Word File

To build a search index, you must create a file that will contain all the stop words for the index. Stop words are all words such as “a,” “an,” and “the” in your topic files that the search facility ignores when it searches for text. The use of stop words helps reduce the size of the search index file (TITLE.IND).

Microsoft supplies the GENERIC.STP stop-word file. This file contains an alphabetically sorted default set of stop words that you can use. Copy this file into your project directory and give it the correct name for your title. For the USA Tour sample title, the stop-word file name is USA.STP. If you want the search facility to ignore other words, add those words to the stop-word file for your title.