suggestions for a spellchecker

Question

suggestions for a spellchecker

Jurafsky (Programmer)

(OP)

17 Nov 12 07:49

I've created a little spellchecker.
This script works in this way:

After reading each line of the text, realizes some corrections
thanks to a comparison between a dictionary and the text itself.

When it finds a word that doesn't exist in the dictionary, it corrects the words
(giving one or more suggestions) and pushes it into an array.

Here there's my problem:

I would like to give to the user the possibility to choose the correct word
among the words suggested. Something like this:

We found the word "wlak" in your text which isn't correct.
The suggested possibilities are:
1. walk
2. work

type the number associated to the word or 0 if you can't find the correct word.

Then I would like to replace the correct word on the original text (creating a new .txt).

How can I do this?

prex1 (Programmer) · Answer 1 · 2012-11-18 02:35:27

I would like to go to the moon.
How can I do this?

http://www.xcalcs.com : Online engineering calculations
http://www.megamag.it : Magnetic brakes for fun rides
http://www.levitans.com : Air bearing pads

Jurafsky (Programmer) · Answer 2 · 2012-11-18 05:39:49

LoL

Without code it's impossible to handle it I know. This is my code.

CODE --> perl

use diagnostics;
use warnings;

my ($file_dictionary, $word, $line, $line1, $alph, $elt, $w, $transposition, $letter1, $letter2);
my (@word, @altered_word, @filedictionary, @filetext, @dictionary, @addition, @replacement, @transposition, @removal);


$file_dictionary = "lexique.txt";
$file_text = "texte.txt";

#I create an array for the dictionary
open (L, "<", $file_dictionary);
while (defined( $line1 = <L>)) {
	chomp($line1);
	@filedictionary = split (/\s/, $line1);
	push (@dictionary, @filedictionary);
	}
	
#I create an array for the text	
open (T, "<", $file_text);
while (defined( $line = <T>)) {
	chomp($line);
	@filetext = split (/(\s|\pP)/, $line);
	for ($i = 0; $i < @filetext; $i++) {
		if (!grep(/^$filetext[$i]$/, @dictionary)) {
		push (@word, $filetext[$i]);
		}
	}
}

#then I create an array for each word 
foreach $w(@word) {
@altered_word = split (//, $w);

#I create an array for the dictionary
open (L, "<", $file_dictionary);
while (defined( $line1 = <L>)) {
	chomp($line1);
	@filedictionary = split (/\s/, $line1);
	push (@dictionary, @filedictionary);
	}

#first operation --> "palrer" will be "parler"
for (my $i=0; $i < $#altered_word ; $i++)
	{
		@transposition = @altered_word;
		$letter1 = $transposition[$i];
		$letter2 = $transposition[$i+1];
		$transposition[$i] = $letter2;
		$transposition[$i+1] = $letter1;
		
		$transposition = join "", @transposition;
		if (grep(/^$transposition$/, @dictionary))
		{
			print "post transposition : $transposition\n";
		}

	}
	
foreach $elt (0 .. $#altered_word) {
#second operation --> parller will be parler

		@removal = @altered_word;
		splice(@removal, $elt, 1);
		$removal = join "", @removal;
		if (grep(/^$removal$/, @dictionary))
		{
			print "post enlevement : $removal\n";
		}

#third operation --> parer will be parler

	foreach $alph('a' .. 'z') {
	
	@addition = @altered_word;
	splice(@addition, $elt, 0, $alph);
	
	$addition = join "", @addition;
		if (grep(/^$addition$/, @dictionary)) {
			print "post addition : $addition\n";
			}

#last operation  : mancer will be manger
		
	@replacement = @altered_word;
	splice(@replacement, $elt, 1, $alph);
	$replacement = join "", @replacement;
		if (grep(/^$replacement$/, @dictionary)) {
			print "post replacement : $replacement\n";
			}
		}
	}
}

TEXT
French Dictionary

prex1 (Programmer) · Answer 3 · 2012-11-19 03:52:02

So I see that you essentially compare the words in the text with the words in the dictionary in the following steps:
-the word as is
-the word with every character swapped with its neighbor
-the word with every single character deleted
-the word with one character added at every possible place (but parer changed to parler is a bad example, as parer exists in french!)
-the word with every single character replaced by another one.
A few notes on your code:
-the dictionary is created twice
-you should close, after reading them, the files you open
-grep(/^$filetext[$i]$/, @dictionary is better written (faster) as $filetext[$i] ~~ @dictionary
-this code

CODE -->

while (defined( $line1 = <L>)) {
  chomp($line1);
  @filedictionary = split (/\s/, $line1);
  push (@dictionary, @filedictionary);
}

can be equivalently written as

CODE -->

while (<L>) {
  push @dictionary, split;
}

This will be a little faster, but there is an important difference: split without argument splits on multiple spaces, not creating null entries when multiple spaces are encountered (this is likely what you want). In your code this would be equivalent to split (/\s+/, $line1).
In essence I think that what you try to do is a gigantic task (not like going to the moon, but...), unless of course this is a divertissement.
Concerning your question, I think that a possible strategy would be to retain the punctuation (but what about guillemets, apostrophes and ...?) in your text array (possibly using split/\b/, though this will also retain the blanks) and then skipping those during the analysis. At the end your text is rebuilt with a join of the text array.
Good luck

http://www.xcalcs.com : Online engineering calculations
http://www.megamag.it : Magnetic brakes for fun rides
http://www.levitans.com : Air bearing pads

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suggestions for a spellchecker