Check if collection of words (pyenchant)

Question

I want to check if a string in Python is a collection of words using PyEnchant.
For example, I want to somehow check a concatenated string is a word or not:

eng = enchant.Dict("en_US")
eng.check("Applebanana")

I know this will return false, but I want it to return true, since Apple + banana are legit words by PyEnchant.

There are endless combinations of legitimate words that are legal words when combined too. Countless others will look like subtle spelling mistakes. Then there are the combinations that when split *differently* become different words. Ever heard of `expertsexchange.com`? And how many words combined are we talking about here? You'll probably have to try out different splits manually and test those words against pyenchant. — Martijn Pieters, Dec 18 '12 at 07:46
Thanks for your input. I thought the pyenchant library has some function that checks... crap! — taesu, Dec 18 '12 at 07:48

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 18 '12 at 08:10

If you limit yourself to words combined from two other words, you can check the combinations yourself:

>>> s = "applebanana"
>>> splits = [(s[:i], s[i:]) for i in range(1,len(s))]
>>> splits
[('a', 'pplebanana'), ('ap', 'plebanana'), ('app', 'lebanana'), 
 ('appl', 'ebanana'), ('apple', 'banana'), ('appleb', 'anana'), 
 ('appleba', 'nana'), ('appleban', 'ana'), ('applebana', 'na'), 
('applebanan', 'a')]
>>> any((eng.check(item[0]) and eng.check(item[1])) for item in splits)
True

Of course you can expand that to more than two, but this should give you a general idea of where you're headed.

Thank you. A lot of complicated then I thought it would be. – taesu Dec 18 '12 at 10:35 — taesu, Dec 18 '12 at 10:35

Check if collection of words (pyenchant)

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