POST PROCESSOR FOR CHARACTER RECOGNITION

PURPOSE:To prevent processing time from being extended and to suppress the processing time within a fixed limit. CONSTITUTION:When the 2nd character e.g. is set up as a retrieval key in the case of allowing a post processor 300 to execute the post processing of a result obtained by recognizing a character in a document 100 by a character recognition part 200, a retrieval key character extracting part 310 transfers candidate characters successively from the 1st candidate character for the 2nd character as retrieval keys. The amount of retrieval obtained by retrieving a word dictionary 320 by a dictionary retrieving part 330 is accumulated and counted by a retrieval amount counting part 340. When the retrieval amount exceeds a prescribed threshold, the counting part 340 allows the extracting part 310 to abort the output of a retrieval key. Thereby a candidate word extracting part 350 extracts the most appropriate word from candiate words retrieved up to the abort. An output word selecting part 360 selects a word to be outputted and outputs the selected word to an output part 400.