/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.lucene.analysis.tokenattributes;


import org.apache.lucene.analysis.Tokenizer;
import org.apache.lucene.util.Attribute;

/**
 * This attribute can be used to pass different flags down the {@link Tokenizer} chain,
 * e.g. from one TokenFilter to another one. 
 * <p>
 * This is completely distinct from {@link TypeAttribute}, although they do share similar purposes.
 * The flags can be used to encode information about the token for use by other 
 * {@link org.apache.lucene.analysis.TokenFilter}s.
 * @lucene.experimental While we think this is here to stay, we may want to change it to be a long.
 */
public interface FlagsAttribute extends Attribute {
  /**
   * Get the bitset for any bits that have been set.  
   * @return The bits
   * @see #getFlags()
   */
  public int getFlags();

  /**
   * Set the flags to a new bitset.
   * @see #getFlags()
   */
  public void setFlags(int flags);  
}