In computer science, the term context-sensitive refers to a program feature that changes depending on what is being done in the program. Complex sensitive situations involve the interpretation of data in which the way one segment of the data is interpreted is dependent upon the interpretation of another segment of the data. In other words, the meaning of one piece of data may change the meaning of another piece of data.

As an example, the "help" function of programs such as Windows is context sensitive, providing documentation of the particular feature requested by the user. Various help topics may be related to one another (such as various functions and manipulations of e-mail), but the help information provided can vary substantially between these related topics. Thus, there must be a means of both recognizing a number of topics based on a search, and sub-dividing these blocks of...