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Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2013 17:37:33 -0400
From: Dave Angel <davea@davea.name>
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Subject: Re: Creating a dictionary from a .txt file
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On 03/31/2013 02:41 PM, Roy Smith wrote:
> In article <mailman.4023.1364751102.2939.python-list@python.org>,
>   Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> wrote:
>
>> On 03/31/2013 12:52 PM, C.T. wrote:
>>> On Sunday, March 31, 2013 12:20:25 PM UTC-4, zipher wrote:
>>>>   <SNIP>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Thank you, Mark! My problem is the data isn't consistently ordered. I can
>>> use slicing and indexing to put the year into a tuple, but because a car
>>> manufacturer could have two names (ie, Aston Martin) or a car model could
>>> have two names(ie, Iron Duke), its harder to use slicing and indexing for
>>> those two.  I've added the following, but the output is still not what I
>>> need it to be.
>>
>> So the correct answer is "it cannot be done," and an explanation.
>>
>> Many times I've been given impossible conditions for a problem.  And
>> invariably the correct solution is to press [back] on the supplier of the
>> constraints.
>
> In real life, you often have to deal with crappy input data (and bogus
> project requirements).  Sometimes you just need to be creative.
>
> There's only a small set of car manufacturers.  A good start would be
> mining wikipedia's [[List of automobile manufacturers]].  Once you've
> got that list, you could try matching portions of the input against the
> list.
>
> Depending on how much effort you wanted to put into this, you could
> explore all sorts of fuzzy matching (ie "delorean" vs "delorean motor
> company"), but even a simple search is better than giving up.
>
> And, this is a good excuse to explore some of the interesting
> third-party modules.  For example, mwclient ("pip install mwclient")
> gives you a neat Python interface to wikipedia.  And there's a whole
> landscape of string matching packages to explore.
>
> We deal with this every day at Songza.  Are Kesha and Ke$ha the same
> artist?  Pushing back on the record labels to clean up their catalogs
> isn't going to get us very far.
>

I agree with everything you've said, although in your case, presumably 
the record labels are not your client/boss, so that's not who you push 
back against.  The client should know when the data is being fudged, and 
have a say in how it's to be done.

But this is a homework assignment.  I think the OP is learning Python, 
not how to second-guess a client.


-- 
DaveA