How to extract words starting with letters from A to L from a text in Python?-CodePudding

Language: Python

So I extracted named entities from a text without using external libraries. Then I wanted to create two lists, one for the names starting with A-L; the other for the names starting with M-Z. I wrote this code, but it did not return any output. Anyone sees what's wrong here? Note that I am a beginner in coding in general and might not be familiar with the terminology.

AL = []
MZ = []
for match in matches:
    if ((match[0] >= "A") and (match[0] <= "L")):
        AL.append(match)
        print("Words between A-L are:  ", AL)
    elif ((match[0] >= "M" and match[0] <= "Z")):
        MZ.append(match)
        print("Words between M-Z are: ", MZ)

CodePudding user response：

So look at the following example:

def filter_words(words):
    AL = []
    MZ = []
    unclassified = []
    for word in words:
        if ((word[0] >= "A") and (word[0] <= "L")):
            AL.append(word)
        elif ((word[0] >= "M" and word[0] <= "Z")):
            MZ.append(word)
        else:
            unclassified.append(word)
    return AL, MZ, unclassified
    

AL, MZ, unclassified = filter_words(["Al", "Bob", "Todd", "Zack", "todd", "zack"])

print(AL)
print(MZ)
print(unclassified)

OUTPUT

['Al', 'Bob']
['Todd', 'Zack']
['todd', 'zack']

Depending on your requirements, you may want to call word.upper() before processing the if statements given that - as you can see - if a name starts with a lower case will be unclassified

CodePudding user response：

I guess the main problem you may have is that you are checking for upper case values and if match[0] is in lower case it won't work

Also you are printing at every iteration you should wait for the entire loop to run and then print. Here

AL= []
MZ = []
for match in matches:
    if ((match[0].lower() >= "a") and (match[0].lower() <= "l")):
        AL.append(match)

    elif ((match[0].lower() >= "m" and match[0].lower() <= "z")):
        MZ.append(match)
        
print("Words between A-L are:  ", AL)
print("Words between M-Z are: ", MZ)

If this still doesn't work please share the match object too. Also your code doesn't account situation when neither of the statements are true.

CodePudding user response：

Here you have to take care of the word case:

matches = ['Arbre', 'Amie', 'Maison', 'Ligne', 'Zebre', 'Maths']

AL = []
MZ = []
for match in matches:
    match = match.upper()
    if ((match[0] >= "A") and (match[0] <= "L")):
        AL.append(match)
    elif ((match[0] >= "M" and match[0] <= "Z")):
        MZ.append(match)
        
print("Words between A-L are:  ", AL)
print("Words between M-Z are: ", MZ)

output is:

Words between A-L are:   ['ARBRE', 'AMIE', 'LIGNE']
Words between M-Z are:  ['MAISON', 'ZEBRE', 'MATHS']