Counts the length of patent descriptions See http://www.patentsbythenumbers.com/2012/08/19/how-long-are-patent-descriptions/

DescLength.py

# DescLength()
# Counts the length of patent descriptions

import MySQLdb as mdb
import sys
import datetime
import re
import math
import time
import numpy as np

def DescLength(TrimTop20 = False):
    #Get Patents from database
    con = mdb.connect('localhost', 'username', 'password', 'database');  
    with con:
         cur = con.cursor()
         cur.execute("SELECT description from USPatents LIMIT 100")
         rows = cur.fetchall()
         desclengths = []

         #count words in each patent
         for x in rows:
            ws = re.findall(r'\w+', x[0])
            words = len(ws)
            desclengths.append(words)

         #chop off top 20%
         if TrimTop20:
           desclengths = sorted(desclengths)
           desclengths = desclengths[1:int(len(desclengths)*.8)]
         
         #create histogram
         nplengths = np.array(desclengths)
         hist=np.histogram(nplengths,bins=np.linspace(min(desclengths)-1,max(desclengths)+1,num=30))       

         #output to file
         thetime = time.strftime("%Y%m%d_%S")
         outputfile = "DescLen"+ thetime + ".txt"
         outfile = open(outputfile, 'w') 
         for result in zip(hist[1],hist[0]):
           line = "[\'%s\', %s],\n" % (int(result[0]), result[1]) 
           outfile.write(line)      
         outfile.close()

         
if __name__=="__main__":
  DescLength()

To see it in action, check out: http://www.patentsbythenumbers.com/2012/08/19/how-long-are-patent-descriptions/