Python - Check if string is the start of an English word

Question

I've been playing around with various modules (e.g. PyEnchant), and what I want to do is determine if a string is the beginning of an English word. E.g.

Smo -> Smoke
A x -> x-ray 
Elx -> NULL
Don -> Done
Brj -> NULL
Bes -> Besiege
Nix -> Nixed

But I'm unsure if there is a way to do it, without creating and loading my own word list.

It doesn't look like PyEnchant supports this, but there are many ways of doing it. But yes, you'll need a word list to compare against. — Falmarri, Mar 06 '15 at 00:16
It is pretty easy to implement, getting a complete wordlist would be about the hardest part — Padraic Cunningham, Mar 06 '15 at 00:26

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:28

Python does not ship with it's own word list, so you would have to load it from somewhere (whether it's a common dictionary, a custom list, etc.).

Now I'm not sure about PyEnchant, but the easiest way to then do this is to create a Trie structure within Python as then checking if a word exists is as easy as going through graph nodes till either you hit a null (return False for word existing with that prefix) or you hit the last character in your search string (return True for word existing with that prefix.) A sample on making a Trie can be found in this thread.

Python - Check if string is the start of an English word

1 Answers1