SciKit Sequitur is an Apache2 licensed Python module for inferring compositional hierarchies from sequences.

Sequitur detects repetition and factors it out by forming rules in a grammar. The rules can be composed of non-terminals, giving rise to a hierarchy. It is useful for recognizing lexical structure in strings, and excels at very long sequences. The Sequitur algorithm was originally developed by Craig Nevill-Manning and Ian Witten.

>>> from sksequitur import parse
>>> grammar = parse('hello hello')
>>> print(grammar)
0 -> 1 _ 1
1 -> h e l l o                                    hello

SciKit Sequitur works on strings, lines, or any sequence of Python objects.

• Pure-Python
• Developed on Python 3.10
• Tested on CPython 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10
• Tested using GitHub Actions on Linux, Mac, and Windows

Installing scikit-sequitur is simple with pip:

$ pip install scikit-sequitur

You can access documentation in the interpreter with Python's built-in help function:

>>> import sksequitur
>>> help(sksequitur)                    # doctest: +SKIP

The scikit-sequitur module provides utilities for parsing sequences and understanding grammars.

>>> from sksequitur import parse
>>> print(parse('abcabc'))
0 -> 1 1
1 -> a b c                                        abc

The parse function is a shortcut for Parser and Grammar objects.

>>> from sksequitur import Parser
>>> parser = Parser()

Feed works incrementally.

>>> parser.feed('ab')
>>> parser.feed('cab')
>>> parser.feed('c')

Parsers can be converted to Grammars.

>>> from sksequitur import Grammar
>>> grammar = Grammar(parser.tree)
>>> print(grammar)
0 -> 1 1
1 -> a b c                                        abc

Grammars are keyed by Productions.

>>> from sksequitur import Production
>>> grammar[Production(0)]
[Production(1), Production(1)]

Mark symbols can be used to store metadata about a sequence. The mark symbol is printed as a pipe character "|".

>>> from sksequitur import Mark
>>> mark = Mark()
>>> mark
Mark()
>>> print(mark)
|

Attributes can be added to mark symbols using keyword arguments.

>>> mark = Mark(kind='start', name='foo.py')
>>> mark
Mark(kind='start', name='foo.py')
>>> mark.kind
'start'

Mark symbols can not be made part of a rule.

>>> parser = Parser()
>>> parser.feed('ab')
>>> parser.feed([Mark()])
>>> parser.feed('cab')
>>> parser.feed([Mark()])
>>> parser.feed('c')
>>> grammar = Grammar(parser.tree)
>>> print(grammar)
0 -> 1 | c 1 | c
1 -> a b                                          ab

• scikit-sequitur Documentation
• scikit-sequitur at PyPI
• scikit-sequitur at GitHub
• scikit-sequitur Issue Tracker

Copyright 2021 Grant Jenks

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.