A class that allows retrieval of a given object by any of its synonyms
Project description
synonym_dict
A class that allows retrieval of a given object by any of its synonyms.
Overview
There are many situations in which an object may be known by several names. synonym_dict
provides a way to:
- Retrieve an object by its name or any synonyms
- Ensure that synonyms are distinct and non-overlapping
- Support case-insensitive tests
Installation
$ pip install synonym_dict
The package has no dependencies.
Testing
$ python -m unittest
Or, on python2
:
$ python -m unittest discover
Code Design
SynonymSet
A SynonymSet
a set of synonyms called "terms" in a hashable collection. Its "name" is canonically its first term, but can be set to any term in the collection. It can also have child objects, all of whose terms are taken to be synonyms.
# from TestSynonymSet.test_name()
s = SynonymSet('hello', 'aloha', 'Ni hao')
assert str(s) == 'hello'
assert s.object == 'hello'
s.set_name('aloha')
assert s.object == 'aloha'
Each synonym set can represent a particular object, such that the terms are synonymous names for that object. The object for the base SynonymSet
is simply the name of the set, but subclasses can override this.
SynonymDict
# from TestSynonymDict.test_explicit_merge()
g = SynonymDict(ignore_case=False) # default
g.new_entry('hello', 'hola', 'hi', 'aloha')
g.new_entry('Hello', 'HELLO', 'Hi', 'HI')
assert g['hi'] == 'hello'
assert g['HI'] == 'Hello'
g.merge('hi', 'HI')
assert g['HI'] == 'hello'
A SynonymDict
is a typed collection of SynonymSets
or subclasses, each of which is called an entry
. The SynonymDict
is responsible for managing the set of terms and preventing collisions. It can be case-sensitive or case-insensitive.
A key functionality of the dict is in combining entries. When creating a new entry, the dict first checks to see if any terms are already assigned to an existing entry. If they are, the merge strategy determines what to do among the choices of "merge", "prune", or "strict":
- The default is to merge the terms into the existing entry. This fails with
MergeError
if the incoming terms match two or more entries. - If "prune" is specified, the duplicate terms are removed from the new entry and it is created using only unknown terms.
- If neither "merge" nor "prune" are specified, the new entry is created only if every term is unknown; otherwise a
TermExists
error is raised.
LowerDict
d = LowerDict()
d['smeeb'] = 42
assert d[' SMeeB '] == 42
d[' dRoOl '] = 17
assert d['drool'] == 17
assert list(d.keys()) == ['smeeb', 'dRoOl']
A simple dict
subclass that implements case-insensitivity. Also strips leading and trailing whitespace. Used to implement case-insensitivity in SynonymDicts
Subclasses
The main utility of these classes comes in subclassing. The standard approach is to create a subclass of SynonymSet
that describes an object of some sort, and then to subclass SynonymDict
to manage the set of entries. Two examples are provided and tested and will someday be documented.
Contributing
Fork or open an issue! Please! I crave critical appraisals of my design and/or implementation decisions.
Project details
Release history Release notifications | RSS feed
Download files
Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.
Source Distribution
Built Distribution
Hashes for synonym_dict-0.2.5-py3-none-any.whl
Algorithm | Hash digest | |
---|---|---|
SHA256 | 62b0331b23fcef7b618bf630d1208f20c0e7d956757574d3e3ae9d41dbfe36b3 |
|
MD5 | d34d1581d2713720620d8a63de1a7bbe |
|
BLAKE2b-256 | d09d2b3239b2a9cfcab9c4e9f8a7f81a7484be484dcb130ccd24c9293eabd9dc |