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Chapter 4. Writing Structured Programs
Chapter 4. Writing Structured Programs
By now you will have a sense of the capabilities of the Python programming language for processing natural language. However, if you’re new to Python or to programming, you may still be wrestling with Python and not feel like you are in full control yet. In this chapter we’ll address the following questions:
How can you write well-structured, readable programs that you and others will be able to reuse easily?
How do the fundamental building blocks work, such as loops, functions, and assignment?
What are some of the pitfalls with Python programming, and how can you avoid them?
Along the way, you will consolidate your knowledge of fundamental programming constructs, learn more about using features of the Python language in a natural and concise way, and learn some useful techniques in visualizing natural language data. As before, this chapter contains many examples and exercises (and as before, some exercises introduce new material). Readers new to programming should work through them carefully and consult other introductions to programming if necessary; experienced programmers can quickly skim this chapter.
In the other chapters of this book, we have organized the programming concepts as dictated by the needs of NLP. Here we revert to a more conventional approach, where the material is more closely tied to the structure of the programming language. There’s not room for a complete presentation of the language, so we’ll just focus on the language constructs and idioms that are most important for NLP.
