Strunk

Strunk is a command-line tool for parsing text documents written in Python.

It takes in a user-defined regular expression ruleset in the form of a .strunk file and checks a given text document for matches with the rules provided. For each match found, the user is given the choice to edit the matching sentence in the text and save any changes made.

Strunk is named after William Strunk, author of The Elements of Style.

Usage

Installing

Install the dependencies by running pip install -r requirements.txt in the root directory of the project.

Running

In the root directory of Strunk, enter python strunk.py example.txt example.strunk at the command line in order to run the ruleset file example.strunk on the text document example.txt. Strunk is compatible with both Python 2.7 and Python 3.6.

Testing

Tests are all included in the tests directory. To run them, use the command py.test --cov strunk/ in the root directory.

Syntax

Strunk uses the custom file format .strunk to designate as the collection of regular expressions to apply to a document. .strunk files have the following syntax:

#COMMENT  
REGULAR EXPRESSION  
ACTION    
SUBJECT  
MORE INFORMATION LINE#1  
MORE INFORMATION LINE#2  
MORE INFORMATION LINE#3  


REGULAR EXPRESSION  
ACTION  
...  
...  
...  
END

Comments

Comments are denoted with # as the first character of a given line. Every comment line must start with # to be considered a comment, i.e "ACTION #some action" is invalid.

Regular Expression

The Regular Expression line contains the regular expression Strunk will evaluate.

Action

The Action line contains the specified action for Strunk to perform. As of the latest commit, this feature is unimplemented and defaults to the 'WARNING' action.

Subject

The Subject line should contain a single, concise sentence that specifies why a match is made for the given expression. For instance, an appropriate subject line for the expression \butilise*\b is "Unnecessary: replace with 'use'". The goal of the subject line is to inform the user at a glance, and so should not exceed 72 characters if possible.

Information

The Information lines are displayed when a match is made by Strunk and a user asks for more information, at which point these lines are displayed. These lines are optional and can fill as many rows as desired.

Between each rule, include two spaces in order to delineate the end of the previous rules' "More Information" lines.

END

The final line of a Strunk file should be "END". Any lines after this are ignored.