Python: External Libraries You Can’t Ignore - Part 3

Uncommon But Extremely Useful

Hi, and welcome to another installment of my exploration of Python’s vast and powerful library ecosystem!

In this segment, I will continue to share some of the coolest Python libraries which have become essential in my coding journey and that I think you might don’t know about them.

Let’s dive in –

1. FlashText - Fast Keyword Searching and Replacement

FlashText is a library that is used for fast keyword searching and replacement. It is more efficient than using regular expressions for keyword-based search operations.

Example:

# FlashText - Fast Keyword Searching and Replacement

from flashtext import KeywordProcessor

keyword_processor = KeywordProcessor()
keyword_processor.add_keyword('JavaScript', 'JS')

text = "JavaScript is a popular programming language."
print(keyword_processor.replace_keywords(text))  

# Output: 
JS is a popular programming language.

This library is significantly faster than regex when performing keyword replacements on large datasets. It is particularly useful in such scenarios where multiple keywords need to be replaced across millions of records.