Abstract: A system and process for performing character recognition is disclosed wherein inputted characters are compared to prototypes maintained in a predetermined database of the system to determine the best matching character. To generate the prototype database for use in recognition, training character samples are inputted and classified and prototypes, having feature value vectors, are generated for each class. The prototypes are optimized to improve the recognition capabilities of the database. The prototype feature value vectors are updated by only small amounts for abnormal prototypes that are much closer to the nearest class M than to the true class I. In addition, the updating of the prototype feature value vectors is performed so as to minimize an error in the selection of the prototypes.