Text Processing in Python

Peter Kitson

ISBN : 0321112547

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CHAPTER I -- PYTHON BASICS

  This chapter discusses Python capabilities that are likely to
  be used in text processing applications. For an introduction
  to Python syntax and semantics per se, readers might want to
  skip ahead to Appendix A (A Selective and Impressionistic
  Short Review of Python); Guido van Rossum\'s _Python Tutorial_
  at <http://python.org/doc/current/tut/tut.html> is also quite
  excellent. The focus here occupies a somewhat higher level:
  not the Python language narrowly, but also not yet specific to
  text processing.

  In Section 1.1, I look at some programming techniques that flow
  out of the Python language itself, but that are usually not
  obvious to Python beginners--and are sometimes not obvious even
  to intermediate Python programmers. The programming techniques
  that are discussed are ones that tend to be applicable to text
  processing contexts--other programming tasks are likely to have
  their own tricks and idioms that are not explicitly documented in
  this book.

  In Section 1.2, I document modules in the Python standard library
  that you will probably use in your text processing application,
  or at the very least want to keep in the back of your mind. A
  number of other Python standard library modules are far enough
  afield of text processing that you are unlikely to use them in
  this type of application. Such remaining modules are documented
  very briefly with one- or two- line descriptions. More details on
  each module can be found with Python\'s standard documentation.

SECTION 1 -- Techniques and Patterns

TOPIC -- Utilizing Higher-Order Functions in Text Processing

 
  This first topic merits a warning. It jumps feet-first into
  higher-order functions (HOFs) at a fairly sophisticated level
  and may be unfamiliar even to experienced Python programmers. Do
  not be too frightened by this first topic--you can understand the
  rest of the book without it. If the functional programming (FP)
  concepts in this topic seem unfamiliar to you, I recommend you
  jump ahead to Appendix A, especially its final section on FP
  concepts.

  In text processing, one frequently acts upon a series of chunks
  of text that are, in a sense, homogeneous.  Most often, these
  chunks are lines, delimited by newline characters--but
  sometimes other sorts of fields and blocks are relevant.
  Moreover, Python has standard functions and syntax for reading
  in lines from a file (sensitive to platform differences).
  Obviously, these chunks are not entirely homogeneous--they can
  contain varying data.  But at the level we worry about during
  processing, each chunk contains a natural parcel of instruction
  or information.