Expanding English language contractions in Python

Question

The English language has a couple of contractions. For instance:

you\'ve -> you have
he\'s -> he is

These can sometimes cause headach

Answer 1

You don't need a library, it is possible to do with reg exp for example.

>>> import re
>>> contractions_dict = {
...     'didn\'t': 'did not',
...     'don\'t': 'do not',
... }
>>> contractions_re = re.compile('(%s)' % '|'.join(contractions_dict.keys()))
>>> def expand_contractions(s, contractions_dict=contractions_dict):
...     def replace(match):
...         return contractions_dict[match.group(0)]
...     return contractions_re.sub(replace, s)
...
>>> expand_contractions('You don\'t need a library')
'You do not need a library'