How to get the WordNet synset given an offset ID?

Question

I have a WordNet synset offset (for example id=\"n#05576222\"). Given this offset, how can I get the synset using Python?

Answer 1

Other than using NLTK, another option would be to use the .tab file from the Open Multilingual WordNet http://compling.hss.ntu.edu.sg/omw/ for the Princeton WordNet. Normally i used the recipe below to access wordnet as a dictionary with offset as the key and ; delimited strings as a values:

# Gets first instance of matching key given a value and a dictionary.    
def getKey(dic, value):
  return [k for k,v.split(";") in dic.items() if v in value]

# Read Open Multi WN's .tab file
def readWNfile(wnfile, option="ss"):
  reader = codecs.open(wnfile, "r", "utf8").readlines()
  wn = {}
  for l in reader:
    if l[0] == "#": continue
    if option=="ss":
      k = l.split("\t")[0] #ss as key
      v = l.split("\t")[2][:-1] #word
    else:
      v = l.split("\t")[0] #ss as value
      k = l.split("\t")[2][:-1] #word as key
    try:
      temp = wn[k]
      wn[k] = temp + ";" + v
    except KeyError:
      wn[k] = v  
  return wn

princetonWN = readWNfile('wn-data-eng.tab')
offset = "n#05576222"
offset = offset.split('#')[1]+'-'+ offset.split('#')[0]

print princetonWN.split(";")
print getKey('heatstroke')