Question

I have a dictionary of synonyms:

synonym = {"this": ["this", "same"],
           "all": ["all", "any", "*"],
           "alluptolastyear": ["alluptolastyear", "uptolastyear"],
           "dekadbefore": ["dekadbefore", "lastdekad", "formerdekad", "precedingdekad"],
           "dekadafter": ["dekadafter", "nextdekad", "followingdekad"],
           "yearbefore": ["yearbefore", "lastyear", "formeryear"],
           "monthbefore": ["monthbefore", "lastmonth", "precedingmonth"]}

Each array stores synonyms, referenced through the keys.
I read two strings from an XML file, and try to compare them.

For example:

• "this" and "same" are equal (synonyms)
• ‘”lastyear”‘ and ‘”formeryear”‘ are equal (synonyms)
• "all" and "nextdekad" are different
• of course, each key value is found in its corresponding array, so each key is a synonym of its array’s strings.

Could some help me to write a pythonic comparison of those strings using the synonym dictionary?

Answer 1

Try this:

def are_sinonims(a, b):
    return a in synonym.get(b,[]) or b in synonym.get(a,[]) or any(a in synonym[k] and b in synonym[k] for k in synonym)

Also, we can rewrite the part a in synonym[k] and b in synonym[k] for k in synonym to a in words and b in words for words in synonym.values() such that:

def are_sinonims(a, b):
    return a in synonym.get(b,[]) \
           or b in synonym.get(a,[]) \
           or any(a in words and b in words for words in synonym.values())