Matching incorrectly spelt words with correct ones in python

Question

I\'m building an app that gets incoming SMSs, then based on a keyword, it looks to see if that keyword is associated with any campaigns that it is running. The way I\'m doin

Answer 1

You could use a fuzzy matching and a named list with regex library e.g., to find any phrase from a list with at most one error (insertion, deletion, substitution):

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import regex as re # pip install regex

words = ["first word", "second word", "third"]
sms = u"junk Furst Word second Third"

for m in re.finditer(ur"(?fie)\L{e<=1}", sms, words=words):
    print(m[0]) # the match
    print(m.span()) # return indexes where the match found in the sms
    # to find out which of the words matched:
    print(next(w for w in words
               if re.match(ur"(?fi)(?:%s){e<=1}" % re.escape(w), m[0])))

Output

Furst Word
(5, 14)
first word
Third
(22, 27)
third

Or you could iterate over the words directly:

for w in words:
    for m in re.finditer(ur"(?fie)(?:%s){e<=1}" % re.escape(w), sms):
        print(m[0])
        print(m.span())
        print(w)

It produces the same output as the first example.