[LUCENE-4514] Make Scorer.freq() well defined: number of matches in doc

• Type: Task
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 4.1, 6.0
• Component/s: core/query/scoring
• Lucene Fields: New
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Robert Muir
• Created: 30/Oct/12 11:55
• Updated: 28/Aug/22 13:31
• Resolved: 30/Oct/12 17:22

Description

Today Scorer.freq() is somewhat useless: because in general it returns the number of matches, but other times it returns a strange floating point value (essentially an intermediate score).

I think it should just return the number of matches in the document. This makes it well-defined and useful to consumers (e.g. if they are going to iterate over the positions or whatever in the future).

   /** Returns number of matches for the current document.
-   *  This returns a float (not int) because
-   *  SloppyPhraseScorer discounts its freq according to how
-   *  "sloppy" the match was.
    *
    * @lucene.experimental */
-  public abstract float freq() throws IOException;
+  public abstract int freq() throws IOException;