2524	 Some Approaches to Best-Match File Searching	 The problem of searching the set of keys in a file to find a key which is closest to a given query key is discussed. After closest in terms of a metric on the the key space is suitably defined three file structures are presented together with their corresponding search algorithms which are intended to reduce the number of comparisons required to achieve the desired result. These methods are derived using certain inequalities satisfied by metrics and by graph-theoretic concepts. Some empirical results are presented which compare the efficiency of the methods. matching file structuring file searching heuristics best match
