ispunct 1.0.3

Small Python library to check if a character is a punctuation character

ispunct

A small Python library for checking whether a character is a punctuation character.

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Quick Start

from ispunct import ispunct

assert ispunct("?")
assert not ispunct("a")
assert ispunct("‽")

Using ispunct as a Library

This package is published on PyPI. You can install it with PIP:

$ pip add ispunct

Or, if using UV for dependency management:

$ uv add ispunct

History

The origin of this project comes from an equivalent function to Julia's ispunct, which is itself derived from the C implementation for obtaining a Unicode character's category code. This is a more complete solution than checking against string.punctuation or curses.ascii.ispunct. There is also a StackOverflow question for this functionality which I have answered.

Notes on Internal Functionality

This library also implements (and uses internally) bitwise functions to calculate the number of leading/trailing zeros/ones in the bitwise representation of a Python integer. We also compute a Python integer that has the same bitpattern as a given character (i.e., simulating Julia's bitcast). These are required in order to determine a character's category code.

Alternative Libraries

This was written mostly as a proof of concept using bitwise operations on character codes. You could derive similar functionality from the standard library unicodedata, or matching on character category with regex (see examples here).

A spiritual sister package and successor to ispunct is strip-marks, in which we further explore unicode operations in Python.

Citation

If your research depends on ispunct, please consider giving us a formal citation: citation.bib.