# kham
Thai word segmentation engine written in Rust. Fast, `no_std`-compatible core library with bindings for Python, WebAssembly, C, and a command-line interface.
[](https://github.com/preedep/kham/actions/workflows/ci.yml)
[](https://crates.io/crates/kham-core)
[](https://pypi.org/project/kham/)
[](https://www.npmjs.com/package/kham-wasm)
## Features
- **newmm algorithm** — DAG-based maximal matching constrained to Thai Character Cluster (TCC) boundaries
- **Multi-target** — single core library ships as a Rust crate, Python wheel, WASM module, C shared library, and CLI binary
- **Zero-copy API** — `segment()` returns `&str` slices into the original input; no heap allocation per token
- **`no_std` core** — `kham-core` compiles for bare-metal targets (`alloc` only, no `std` dependency)
- **Built-in dictionary** — 62,102-word CC0-licensed Thai word list embedded at compile time; custom dictionaries loaded at runtime
- **TNC frequency scoring** — Thai National Corpus (CC0) raw counts guide the DP scorer to prefer statistically common segmentations
- **Pre-compiled DARTS** — Double-Array Trie built once at compile time and loaded from a binary blob at runtime (~64 µs vs ~960 ms construction)
- **Text normalization** — วรรณยุกต์ dedup and Sara Am composition before segmentation
- **Thai FTS pipeline** — `FtsTokenizer` adds stopword filtering, synonym expansion, POS tagging, named entity recognition, RTGS romanization, and OOV n-gram fallback; ready for PostgreSQL `tsvector` integration
- **Named entity recognition** — gazetteer-based NER with greedy multi-token matching (up to 5 consecutive tokens); ~10,400 entries covering Thai provinces, 246 countries, and 10,000+ person names
- **Part-of-speech tagging** — 13-category lookup table for Thai tokens
## Packages
| `kham-core` | [crates.io](https://crates.io/crates/kham-core) | Pure Rust engine, `no_std` compatible |
| `kham-cli` | [crates.io](https://crates.io/crates/kham-cli) | `kham` binary (clap) |
| `kham-python` | [PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/kham/) | Python bindings via PyO3 / maturin |
| `kham-wasm` | [npm](https://www.npmjs.com/package/kham-wasm) | WebAssembly bindings via wasm-bindgen |
| `kham-capi` | [crates.io](https://crates.io/crates/kham-capi) | C FFI with cbindgen-generated header |
| `kham-pg` | [PGXN](https://pgxn.org/dist/kham_pg/) (coming soon) | PostgreSQL extension: custom text search parser for Thai |
## Quick start
### Rust
```toml
[dependencies]
kham-core = "0.1"
```
```rust
use kham_core::Tokenizer;
let tok = Tokenizer::new();
let tokens = tok.segment("กินข้าวกับปลา");
for t in &tokens {
println!("{} ({:?})", t.text, t.kind);
}
// กิน (Thai)
// ข้าว (Thai)
// กับ (Thai)
// ปลา (Thai)
```
Mixed script works out of the box:
```rust
let tokens = tok.segment("ธนาคาร100แห่ง");
assert_eq!(tokens[0].text, "ธนาคาร"); // Thai
assert_eq!(tokens[1].text, "100"); // Number
assert_eq!(tokens[2].text, "แห่ง"); // Thai
```
### Python
```bash
pip install kham
```
```python
import kham
tokens = kham.segment("กินข้าวกับปลา")
print(tokens) # ['กิน', 'ข้าว', 'กับ', 'ปลา']
tokens = kham.segment_tokens("ธนาคาร100แห่ง")
for t in tokens:
print(t.text, t.char_start, t.char_end, t.kind)
# ธนาคาร 0 6 Thai
# 100 6 9 Number
# แห่ง 9 13 Thai
```
### JavaScript / TypeScript (WASM)
```bash
npm install kham-wasm
```
```js
import init, { segment, segment_tokens } from "kham-wasm";
await init();
const words = segment("กินข้าวกับปลา");
// ["กิน", "ข้าว", "กับ", "ปลา"]
const tokens = segment_tokens("ธนาคาร100แห่ง");
for (const t of tokens) {
console.log(t.text, t.char_start, t.char_end, t.kind);
}
```
### PostgreSQL
`kham-pg` registers a custom text search parser so you can index and query Thai text with `tsvector` / `tsquery`.
```bash
make -C kham-pg regress # build + run pg_regress in Docker (PostgreSQL 17)
make -C kham-pg install # install locally (requires pg_config in PATH)
psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION kham_pg;"
```
```sql
-- Token types
SELECT * FROM ts_token_type('kham');
-- 1 thai Thai word
-- 2 latin Latin script token
-- 3 number Numeric token
-- 4 punct Punctuation
-- 5 emoji Emoji token
-- 6 unknown Unknown / OOV token
-- 7 named Named entity token (person, place, organisation)
-- Tokenise
SELECT * FROM ts_parse('kham', 'ทักษิณเดินทางไปกรุงเทพ');
-- 1 เดิน
-- 1 ทาง
-- 1 ไป
-- 7 ทักษิณ ← Named: Person
-- 7 กรุงเทพ ← Named: Place (merged from กรุง+เทพ by multi-token NE)
-- Build tsvector
SELECT to_tsvector('kham', 'กินข้าวกับปลา');
-- 'กิน':1 'กับ':3 'ข้าว':2 'ปลา':4
-- Search
SELECT title FROM articles
WHERE to_tsvector('kham', body) @@ plainto_tsquery('kham', 'ข้าว ปลา');
-- GIN index
CREATE INDEX articles_fts_idx ON articles
USING GIN (to_tsvector('kham', body));
```
> **Note:** `ts_headline` is not supported — the kham parser has no HEADLINE callback.
### CLI
```bash
cargo install kham-cli
```
```bash
kham --kind "ธนาคาร100แห่ง" # ธนาคาร:Thai|100:Number|แห่ง:Thai
kham --spans "กินข้าวกับปลา" # กิน:0-3|ข้าว:3-7|กับ:7-10|ปลา:10-13
# FTS pipeline — kind, POS, NE, stopword (one token per line)
kham --fts "ทักษิณเดินทางไปกรุงเทพ"
# ทักษิณ kind=Named pos=- ne=Person stop=false
# เดิน kind=Thai pos=Verb ne=- stop=false
# ทาง kind=Thai pos=- ne=- stop=true
# ไป kind=Thai pos=Verb ne=- stop=true
# กรุงเทพ kind=Named pos=- ne=Place stop=false
```
### C
```c
#include "kham.h"
KhamTokens *t = kham_segment("กินข้าวกับปลา");
for (size_t i = 0; i < t->len; i++) printf("%s\n", t->words[i]);
kham_tokens_free(t);
// Rich token structs
KhamTokenList *list = kham_segment_tokens("ธนาคาร100แห่ง");
for (size_t i = 0; i < list->len; i++) {
KhamToken tok = list->tokens[i];
printf("%s char %zu..%zu %s\n", tok.text, tok.char_start, tok.char_end, tok.kind);
}
kham_token_list_free(list);
```
Generate the header:
```bash
cbindgen --config kham-capi/cbindgen.toml --crate kham-capi --output kham-capi/include/kham.h
cargo build -p kham-capi --release
```
## Token contract
```rust
pub struct Token<'a> {
pub text: &'a str, // zero-copy slice of the input string
pub span: Range<usize>, // byte offsets in the original string
pub char_span: Range<usize>, // Unicode scalar-value (char) offsets
pub kind: TokenKind, // Thai | Latin | Number | Punctuation | Emoji | Whitespace | Unknown | Named(NamedEntityKind)
}
```
- `span` — byte offsets; slice with `&input[token.span.clone()]`
- `char_span` — Unicode scalar-value offsets for Python/JavaScript indexing
- Joining all `token.text` values (whitespace kept) reconstructs the original input exactly
## Full-Text Search
`FtsTokenizer` wraps the segmenter with the full NLP pipeline:
```rust
use kham_core::fts::FtsTokenizer;
let fts = FtsTokenizer::new();
// All tokens with metadata
let tokens = fts.segment_for_fts("ทักษิณเดินทางไปกรุงเทพ");
for t in &tokens {
println!("{} ne={:?} pos={:?} stop={}", t.text, t.ne, t.pos, t.is_stop);
}
// ทักษิณ ne=Some(Person) pos=None stop=false
// เดิน ne=None pos=Verb stop=false
// ทาง ne=None pos=None stop=true
// ไป ne=None pos=Verb stop=true
// กรุงเทพ ne=Some(Place) pos=None stop=false ← merged from กรุง+เทพ
// Flat lexeme list for tsvector (stopwords removed)
let lexemes = fts.lexemes("กินข้าวกับปลา");
// → ["กิน", "ข้าว", "ปลา"]
```
Builder options:
```rust
use kham_core::fts::FtsTokenizer;
use kham_core::synonym::SynonymMap;
use kham_core::stopwords::StopwordSet;
use kham_core::romanizer::RomanizationMap;
let fts = FtsTokenizer::builder()
.synonyms(SynonymMap::from_tsv(include_str!("synonyms.tsv")))
.stopwords(StopwordSet::from_text("ซื้อ\nขาย\n"))
.romanization(RomanizationMap::builtin()) // adds RTGS to synonyms: กิน → "kin"
.ngram_size(3) // trigrams for Unknown tokens (0 = disable)
.build();
```
`FtsToken` fields: `text`, `position`, `kind`, `is_stop`, `synonyms`, `trigrams`, `pos`, `ne`.
## Named entity recognition
The built-in gazetteer (~10,400 entries) covers:
| Place | Thai provinces (77), full country list (246), world cities, regions |
| Person | 10,000+ Thai given names filtered against the dictionary to reduce false positives |
| Org | Thai government ministries, state enterprises, banks, universities, international orgs |
Multi-token matching merges compound names split by the segmenter:
```
กรุงเทพ → segmenter splits → กรุง + เทพ
→ NE tagger merges → กรุงเทพ Named(Place)
กนกวรรณ → segmenter splits → กนก + วร + รณ
→ NE tagger merges → กนกวรรณ Named(Person)
```
See [ADR-001](doc/adr-001-ne-person-name-import-strategy.md) for the person-name import decision.
## Building
```bash
cargo build # all crates (also runs build.rs → dict.bin)
cargo test --release # all tests
cargo test -p kham-core --release # core only
cargo bench -p kham-core # criterion benchmarks
# Bindings
wasm-pack build kham-wasm --target web
cd kham-python && maturin develop
make -C kham-pg regress # PostgreSQL: Docker pg_regress
```
Prerequisites per target:
| All | Rust ≥ 1.85 | `curl -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs \| sh` |
| WASM | `wasm-pack` | `cargo install wasm-pack` |
| Python | `maturin` | `pip install maturin` |
| C | `cbindgen` | `cargo install cbindgen` |
| PostgreSQL | Docker with BuildKit | [docs.docker.com](https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/) |
| PostgreSQL (local) | `pg_config`, C compiler, `gettext` (macOS) | `brew install postgresql@17 gettext` |
## CI
| `fmt` | `cargo fmt --check` |
| `clippy` | `cargo clippy -D warnings` |
| `test` | Unit + integration + doc tests, stable and MSRV 1.85, Linux and macOS |
| `no_std` | `kham-core` compiles for `thumbv7em-none-eabihf` |
| `wasm` | `wasm-pack build --target web` succeeds |
| `python` | `maturin develop` on Python 3.8 and 3.12 |
| `pg_regress` | 67 SQL tests across 4 suites in Docker PostgreSQL 17 |
## Further reading
| [doc/architecture.md](doc/architecture.md) | Crate graph, pipeline flowcharts, module responsibilities (Mermaid) |
| [doc/benchmarks.md](doc/benchmarks.md) | Throughput numbers, dict construction, PostgreSQL benchmarks |
| [doc/dict-format.md](doc/dict-format.md) | `dict.bin` binary format, DARTS lifecycle, data sources |
| [doc/adr-001-ne-person-name-import-strategy.md](doc/adr-001-ne-person-name-import-strategy.md) | Why person names are filtered against `words_th.txt` |
## License
Licensed under either of:
- [MIT License](LICENSE-MIT)
- [Apache License, Version 2.0](LICENSE-APACHE)
at your option.