regular expression dictionary key search

[kdt]

Wow, I really am full of horrid questions today.

I have a dictionary with a list of patterns:

>>> words = {'sho.':6, '.ilk':8,'.an.':78 }

Where the "." character means any pattern - this can easily be changed to the "*" symbol if need be.

When the user submits a word, I want to be able to look for a corresponding pattern (if it exists). For example if the user said "show" or "shoe", then the value 6 would be returned. If it was "band", "land", "sand", "pant" etc then 78 would be returned - but not "pants" as it is longer than the pattern.

I know the normal way is to provide the reg exp and search the dictionary with it, but this is the other way round :(

Thanks

[bartonc]

Wow, I really am full of horrid questions today.

I have a dictionary with a list of patterns:

>>> words = {'sho.':6, '.ilk':8,'.an.':78 }

Where the "." character means any pattern - this can easily be changed to the "*" symbol if need be.

When the user submits a word, I want to be able to look for a corresponding pattern (if it exists). For example if the user said "show" or "shoe", then the value 6 would be returned. If it was "band", "land", "sand", "pant" etc then 78 would be returned - but not "pants" as it is longer than the pattern.

I know the normal way is to provide the reg exp and search the dictionary with it, but this is the other way round :(

Thanks

The '$' is the "end of string" operator:

>>> import re
>>> reObj = re.compile('.an.$')
>>> bool(reObj.match("pants"))
False
>>> bool(reObj.match("pant"))
True
>>> 
>>> words = ["show", "shoe", "band", "land", "sand", "pant", "pants"]
>>> pattDict= {'sho.$':6, '.ilk$':8,'.an.$':78 }
>>> for word in words:
...     for k, v in pattDict.items():
...         if re.match(k,word):
...             print word, v
...             
show 6
shoe 6
band 78
land 78
sand 78
pant 78
>>> 

Hope that helps.

[kdt]

It sickens me that you make it look so easy! This problem has been the bottleneck for two projects. Thank you so much :)

[bartonc]

It sickens me that you make it look so easy! This problem has been the bottleneck for two projects. Thank you so much :)

<Which part: The k, v thing or the $ thing?>
Cheer up... I actually struggled with the $ thing for a bit.

[kdt]

Thankfully just the $ thing. :)