Lucene query: bla~* (match words that start with something fuzzy), how?

Question

In the Lucene query syntax I\'d like to combine * and ~ in a valid query similar to: bla~* //invalid query

Meaning: Please match words that begin with \"bla\" or so

Answer 1

in the development trunk of lucene (not yet a release), there is code to support use cases like this, via AutomatonQuery. Warning: the APIs might/will change before its released, but it gives you the idea.

Here is an example for your case:

// a term representative of the query, containing the field. 
// the term text is not so important and only used for toString() and such
Term term = new Term("yourfield", "bla~*");

// builds a DFA that accepts all strings within an edit distance of 2 from "bla"
Automaton fuzzy = new LevenshteinAutomata("bla").toAutomaton(2);

// concatenate this DFA with another DFA equivalent to the "*" operator
Automaton fuzzyPrefix = BasicOperations.concatenate(fuzzy, BasicAutomata.makeAnyString());

// build a query, search with it to get results.
AutomatonQuery query = new AutomatonQuery(term, fuzzyPrefix);