Identifying electronic files in accordance with a derivative attribute based upon a predetermined relevance criterion

摘要

A computer-implemented method and program for identifying electronic files from a set of electronic files uses an operating agent to identify first and second subsets of electronic files. The files in the first subset are those able to be opened by the operating agent, while files in the second subset are the remainder. For each electronic file in the second subset at least one native attribute contained in the electronic file is identified. The method and program are characterized by creating, for each file in the second subset, a derivative attribute having a value representative of the file's relevance to the predetermined topic. The derivative attribute being based upon the presence or absence of at least one of a target character strings in the identified native attribute for each electronic file in the second subset. Additional derivative attribute(s) representative of the presence of a privilege and/or confidential information may be created. The value(s) of the derivative attribute(s) is(are) stored in a data structure.