ftfarias

A Hacker's Guide to Python string and Natural Language Processing (NLP) packages

Preprocessing

• The Python Standard Library, especially str.methods and string module are powerful for text processing. Start there.
• regex - Extends Python's Standard Library re module while being backwards-compatible.
• chardet - Finds character encoding.
• ftfy - Take in bad Unicode and output good Unicode. Seriously automagical.
• ploygot - Helpful for multilingual preprocessing.

ftfarias

When are Python circular imports fatal?

In your Python package, you have:

• an __init__.py that designates this as a Python package
• a module_a.py, containing a function action_a() that references an attribute (like a function or variable) in module_b.py, and
• a module_b.py, containing a function action_b() that references an attribute (like a function or variable) in module_a.py.

This situation can introduce a circular import error: module_a attempts to import module_b, but can't, because module_b needs to import module_a, which is in the process of being interpreted.

But, sometimes Python is magic, and code that looks like it should cause this circular import error works just fine!