How to Intersect Split Strings with Partial Words in Python

Learn how to find intersections between a list of partial keywords and full words in Python using regex and simple string methods.
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Finding Partial Word Matches in Python: A Guide

When working with strings and lists in Python, you might encounter situations where you need to find how many full words begin with a set of partial keywords. This can be especially useful in text analysis or data processing tasks. In this guide, we will explore a clear approach on how to achieve this using regular expressions and basic string methods.

The Problem

Consider the following example where you have two lists:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Your goal is to find out how many words in the splitSentences list begin with any of the words in the keywords list. In this case, there are two matches:

"critical" matches "critic"

"argument" matches "argu"

Unfortunately, using the simple intersection method like set(keywords).intersection(splitSentences) will return 0, as it only checks for exact matches. So, how can we achieve the desired result? Let’s break down the solution.

The Solution

Using Regular Expressions

Regular expressions (regex) provide a powerful way to search for patterns in strings. We can utilize regex to create a pattern that checks for words starting with our keywords.

Here’s how you can implement this approach:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Simplified One-Liner Solutions

If you prefer more concise code, here are two alternative methods you can use that achieve the same goal:

Semi One-Liner

This method uses a list comprehension to create a count of matches for each keyword in splitSentences:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

True One-Liner

For those who like brevity, you can combine everything into a single line of code that creates a dictionary with each keyword and its respective match count:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

How It Works

List Comprehensions: The semi one-liner creates a list of counts for each keyword, while the true one-liner returns a full dictionary of counts, providing a clear summary of all keywords and their corresponding matches.

Conclusion

In summary, whether utilizing regular expressions or leveraging Python's built-in string methods, you can efficiently find how many words begin with specified keywords in a list. This approach can be applied in various contexts to enhance text processing tasks.

Feel free to adapt these examples to fit your projects in Python, and don’t hesitate to experiment with regex and string methods to deepen your understanding. Happy coding!