Identifying correct bacteriological vocabulary: software to look up RKC codes and statements
Medical Statistics and Computing, University of Southampton. Southampton General Hospital Southampton SO16 6 YD. UK
A program has been written to help identify the correct RKC codes (Rogosa, Krichevsky and Colwell, 1986) for describing microbiological attributes. Terms, which may be complete words, parts of words, or numbers, can be typed into the computer. A search is made of the set of about 13800 RKC codes and statements that describe them. Statements ments that contain the search terms are displayed in a scrolling window so that the required statement(s) can be identified. A list of selected RKC statements can be built up in a second window for subsequent use by other software packages. The program called RKCLIST runs under the MS-DOS operating system. The software routines used to create RKCLIST have been written so that they can be incorporated into other software packages that make use of the RKC coding scheme.
Received on February 17, 1994; accepted on June 15, 1994