How can I split a text into sentences?

Solution 1:

The Natural Language Toolkit (nltk.org) has what you need. This group posting indicates this does it:

import nltk.data

tokenizer = nltk.data.load('tokenizers/punkt/english.pickle')
fp = open("test.txt")
data = fp.read()
print '\n-----\n'.join(tokenizer.tokenize(data))

(I haven't tried it!)

Solution 2:

This function can split the entire text of Huckleberry Finn into sentences in about 0.1 seconds and handles many of the more painful edge cases that make sentence parsing non-trivial e.g. "Mr. John Johnson Jr. was born in the U.S.A but earned his Ph.D. in Israel before joining Nike Inc. as an engineer. He also worked at craigslist.org as a business analyst."

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import re
alphabets= "([A-Za-z])"
prefixes = "(Mr|St|Mrs|Ms|Dr)[.]"
suffixes = "(Inc|Ltd|Jr|Sr|Co)"
starters = "(Mr|Mrs|Ms|Dr|He\s|She\s|It\s|They\s|Their\s|Our\s|We\s|But\s|However\s|That\s|This\s|Wherever)"
acronyms = "([A-Z][.][A-Z][.](?:[A-Z][.])?)"
websites = "[.](com|net|org|io|gov)"

def split_into_sentences(text):
    text = " " + text + "  "
    text = text.replace("\n"," ")
    text = re.sub(prefixes,"\\1<prd>",text)
    text = re.sub(websites,"<prd>\\1",text)
    if "Ph.D" in text: text = text.replace("Ph.D.","Ph<prd>D<prd>")
    text = re.sub("\s" + alphabets + "[.] "," \\1<prd> ",text)
    text = re.sub(acronyms+" "+starters,"\\1<stop> \\2",text)
    text = re.sub(alphabets + "[.]" + alphabets + "[.]" + alphabets + "[.]","\\1<prd>\\2<prd>\\3<prd>",text)
    text = re.sub(alphabets + "[.]" + alphabets + "[.]","\\1<prd>\\2<prd>",text)
    text = re.sub(" "+suffixes+"[.] "+starters," \\1<stop> \\2",text)
    text = re.sub(" "+suffixes+"[.]"," \\1<prd>",text)
    text = re.sub(" " + alphabets + "[.]"," \\1<prd>",text)
    if "”" in text: text = text.replace(".”","”.")
    if "\"" in text: text = text.replace(".\"","\".")
    if "!" in text: text = text.replace("!\"","\"!")
    if "?" in text: text = text.replace("?\"","\"?")
    text = text.replace(".",".<stop>")
    text = text.replace("?","?<stop>")
    text = text.replace("!","!<stop>")
    text = text.replace("<prd>",".")
    sentences = text.split("<stop>")
    sentences = sentences[:-1]
    sentences = [s.strip() for s in sentences]
    return sentences

Solution 3:

Instead of using regex for spliting the text into sentences, you can also use nltk library.

>>> from nltk import tokenize
>>> p = "Good morning Dr. Adams. The patient is waiting for you in room number 3."

>>> tokenize.sent_tokenize(p)
['Good morning Dr. Adams.', 'The patient is waiting for you in room number 3.']

ref: https://stackoverflow.com/a/9474645/2877052

Solution 4:

You can try using Spacy instead of regex. I use it and it does the job.

import spacy
nlp = spacy.load('en')

text = '''Your text here'''
tokens = nlp(text)

for sent in tokens.sents:
    print(sent.string.strip())