Question

I have a python script that receives text messages from users, and processes them as a query. However, some users have signatures automatically appended to their messages, and the script incorrectly treats them as actual content. What’s the best programmatic way to recognize and remove these signatures?

(I’d prefer in python, but am fine with any other language too, as well as just saying it in pseudocode)

Answer 1

If the signatures are appended to the body of the message such that they’re actually part of the body text, then there are only two ways to remove them:

• Heuristics, such as “anything following three dashes must be a signature”. These may be effective if you spend some time tuning them.
• A classifier. This is a lot of work to set up, and requires that you “train” it by marking some message parts as signatures. These can also be very effective, but like heuristics will never work 100% of the time.