python - How to save nltk Text.similar() with variable

Question

I'm a noob in nltk and python.Recently I got a problem,I want to save what text.similar() show in terminal in a variable,but I failed many times.How could I save it?

text = nltk.Text(word.lower() for word in nltk.corpus.brown.words())
save = []
for word in nltk.word_tokenize("i want to slove this problem"):
    save.append(text.similar(word))

Sadly,I found there is nothing in save[].Then I test code "word = text.similar('women')",I also found there is nothing in "word". I realized it seams I couldn't save text.similar(). What should I do to save it?

Answer 1

Instances of nltk.Text are really meant only for interactive exploration. It dumps a lot of stuff to the console, but really doesn't return any constructed objects from it's functions.

What you want in this case is the nltk.ContextIndex class. Using this class...

import nltk
import nltk.text
import nltk.corpus

idx = nltk.text.ContextIndex([word.lower( ) for word in nltk.corpus.brown.words( )])
save = [ ]
for word in nltk.word_tokenize("i want to solve this problem"):
    save.append(idx.similar_words(word))

When done, save will be a nest list of the most frequent words in the contexts of "i", "want", "to", etc.

Take a look at the online nltk.text.Text documentation, specifically the similar method, where it references nltk.text.ContextIndex