Sentence RegExp

[Aarem]

What is the standard RegExp for a sentence?

 

[PaulTEG]

Start by defining what you consider a regular sentence, and remember that the regex itself can be defined in a sentence, so Capital letter, just about anything printable, followed by a period, or full stop.

/^[A-Z](*)\.$/

But I wouldn't swear by that, because you could be talking about finance and 3 dollars, sixty cents would make muck of that prematurely $3.60.

Would you care to narrow the specification?

--Paul

Serious about the regex though, not my strong suit

Nancy Griffith - songstress extraordinaire,
and composer of the snipers anthem "From a distance ...

 

[mikevh]

I'm not aware that there is a standard regex for a sentence.
As Paul says above, how do you define a sentence?

Spurred on by your post, though, I came up with the following, which works with the data I used, anyway. I've defined a sentence as any string of chars terminating in a ., ?, or !, and followed by 2 or more spaces or the end of the string.

If anyone has other ideas, I'd be interested to hear about them.

#!perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $data;
{
    local $/ = "";
    $data = <DATA>;
}
$data =~ s/\n(?!$)/ /sg;
[b]my @sentences = $data =~ /(.+?[.?!])(?:\s\s+|$)/g;[/b]
for (my $i=0; $i<@sentences; $i++) {
    print "$i: $sentences[$i]\n";
}

__DATA__
There are 5 rooms in Mr. Tanaka's house.  On the first floor are the living
room and the kitchen.  Outside the living room window, we see a garden.  In
the garden, we see Mr. Tanaka playing ball with his son.  On the second floor
are the master bedroom, a bathroom, and the children's bedroom.  There is no
TV in the children's bedroom, but there are a stereo and a computer.

Output:

0: There are 5 rooms in Mr. Tanaka's house.
1: On the first floor are the living room and the kitchen.
2: Outside the living room window, we see a garden.
3: In the garden, we see Mr. Tanaka playing ball with his son.
4: On the second floor are the master bedroom, a bathroom, and the children's bedroom.
5: There is no TV in the children's bedroom, but there are a stereo and a computer.

 

[Aarem]

I am looking for a sentence that matches the following:

-Case-insensitive
-Ends with period, semicolon, question mark, or exclamation point.
-Has a whitespace character after the end punctuation

I would also like to know if the sentence contains a colon, or whatever I specify. And if it does, then add a <SPAN> to the beginning and a </SPAN> to the end of the sentence.

 

[mikevh]

My earlier code can be easily adapted to do this. I changed the sentence terminators to include a semicolon and decreased the minimum number of whitespaces after a terminator to 1, and added a sub. Note that this new definition of a sentence gives us different results, though, as some sentences in my example contain a period followed by a space. Your data doesn't, hopefully.

#!perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $data;
{
    local $/ = "";
    $data = <DATA>;
}
$data =~ s/\n(?!$)/ /sg;
[b]my @sentences = $data =~ /(.+?[.;?!])(?:\s+|$)/g;[/b]
for (my $i=0; $i<@sentences; $i++) {
    [b]$sentences[$i] = process($sentences[$i], ":");[/b]
    print "$i: $sentences[$i]\n";
}

[b]sub process {
    my ($string, $pattern) = @_;
    $string =~ /$pattern/? "<SPAN>".$string."</SPAN>": $string;
}[/b]

__DATA__
There are 5 rooms in Mr. Tanaka's house.  On the first floor: the living
room and the kitchen.  Outside the living room window, we see a garden.  In
the garden, we see Mr. Tanaka playing ball with his son.  On the second floor:
the master bedroom, a bathroom, and the children's bedroom.  There is no
TV in the children's bedroom; but there are a stereo and a computer.

Output:

0: There are 5 rooms in Mr.
1: Tanaka's house.
2: <SPAN>On the first floor: the living room and the kitchen.</SPAN>
3: Outside the living room window, we see a garden.
4: In the garden, we see Mr.
5: Tanaka playing ball with his son.
6: <SPAN>On the second floor: the master bedroom, a bathroom, and the children's bedroom.</SPAN>
7: There is no TV in the children's bedroom;
8: but there are a stereo and a computer.

 

[Aarem]

Okay. Now I need some more help. I need to figure out how to stop it from highlighting a sentence twice because it contains two clues. Can your help?

 

[tchatzi]

You can also do it like this

#!perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $data;
{
    local $/ = "";
    $data = <DATA>;
}

$data =~ s/\n/ /g;
my @sent = split(/(\.|\?|\!)\s/,$data);

for(my $i=0;$i<$#sent-1;$i+=2){
	if ($sent[$i] =~ /:/){
		print "$i: <SPAN>$sent[$i]$sent[$i+1]</SPAN>\n";
	}else{
		print "$i: $sent[$i]$sent[$i+1]\n";
	}

}

__DATA__
There are 5 rooms in Mr Tanaka's house. On the first floor: the living
room and the kitchen. Outside the living room window, we see a garden. In
the garden, we see Mr Tanaka playing ball with his son? On the second floor:
the master bedroom, a bathroom, and the children's bedroom! There is no
TV in the children's bedroom; but there are a stereo and a computer.

Sentence:   There are 5 rooms in Mr Tanaka's house.
Sentence:   <SPAN>On the first floor: the living room and the kitchen.</SPAN>
Sentence:   Outside the living room window, we see a garden.
Sentence:   In the garden, we see Mr Tanaka playing ball with his son?
Sentence:   <SPAN>On the second floor: the master bedroom, a bathroom, and the children's bedroom!</SPAN>
Sentence:   There is no TV in the children's bedroom; but there are a stereo and a computer.

but if the sentence contains one space after the end and you have a sentence like this
'There are 5 rooms in Mr. Tanaka's house.'
then i dont think that can be done. Cause it will divide the sentence into two different ones.

 

[tchatzi]

sorry
in the print "$i:..........
change the '$i:' with this 'Sentence:'
I appologise for this

But if you really want a liner

then do it like this

my $j = 1;
for(my $i=0;$i<$#sent-1;$i+=2){
    if ($sent[$i] =~ /:/){
        print "$j: <SPAN>$sent[$i]$sent[$i+1]</SPAN>\n";
    }else{
        print "$j: $sent[$i]$sent[$i+1]\n";
    }
$j++;
}