SPUG: Software to expand contractions?

[Cantrall, Christopher W]

You could use a dispatch table of sorts.  This let's you take care of the easy substitutions and worry about the is/has/possesive hard ones later.  

%substitutions{
can't     => can not,
won't     => will not,
isn't     => is not,
shouldn't => should not,
wouldn't  => would not,
wasn't    => was not,
they're   => they are,
we're     => we are,
I'm       => I am,
I'll      => I will,
};

Of course, these will need to be properly quoted, and the apostrophes properly escaped, but it's Monday morning and I know I'll foul that up if I try before my first coffee.  

Good luck, I love the book so far.

____________________________________________
Chris Cantrall
  Structural Engineer, 777 Fuselage, Boeing
    Christopher.W.Cantrall at Boeing.com
  chris at cantrall.org
    http://perlmonks.org/index.pl?node=Louis_Wu
    http://spugwiki.perlocity.org/index.cgi?LouisWu


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Maher [mailto:tim at consultix-inc.com]
> Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2003 10:43 AM
> To: spug-list at pm.org
> Cc: Damian Conway
> Subject: SPUG: Software to expand contractions?
> 
> 
> Dudes,
> 
> I'm getting complaints from some early reviewers of my book
> about all the "contractions" I'm using in my writing!
> So last night I set out to write a Perl script to make changes
> like the following:
> 
> 	That's => That is
> 	He's => He is
> 	They're => They are
> 	We're => We are
> 
> Then I realized that the 's ending usually needs replacement by
> "is", so I tried
> 
> 	"'s" => ' is'
> which doesn't quite work, because of the undesirability of changing
> 
> 	Larry's hat  => Larry is hat
> 
> After making an exception for that case, I found other complications,
> such as
> 
> 	wouldn't => would not
> 	can't => can not
> 
> These follow different rules, because the 'wouldn' loses its 
> 'n', but the
> 'can' doesn't!
> 
> So at that point I realized that this is a bigger problem than I first
> thought, and decided to look for a solution on CPAN.  Searching for
> "contractions" didn't turn up anything relevant, so now I'm 
> wondering if
> anybody knows of a module that will do this job -- convert a 
> standard set of English
> contractions into their expanded forms.  
> 
> Can't y'all gimme the help I'm searchin' for?
>  
> -Tim
> *------------------------------------------------------------*
> | Tim Maher (206) 781-UNIX  (866) DOC-PERL  (866) DOC-UNIX   |
> | tim(AT)Consultix-Inc.Com  TeachMeUnix.Com  TeachMePerl.Com |
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> |  UNIX Fundamentals Class: 11/10-13   Perl Class: 12/01-05  |
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