def abbreviate(to_abbreviate):
phrase = to_abbreviate.replace("-", " ").replace("_", " ").upper().split()
return "".join(map(lambda word: word[0], phrase))
- This approach begins by using
str.replace()onto_abbreviateto convert non-letter characters such as-and_into spaces. - The phrase is then upper-cased by calling
str.upper(). - Finally, the phrase is turned into a
listof words by callingstr.split().
The three methods above are all chained together, with each method operating on the output of the method before it in the "chain".
This works because both replace() and upper() operate on strings (as they are str methods) and return strings.
If split() was called first, replace() and upper() would fail, since they cannot operate on the list returned by split().
re.findall() or re.finditer() can also be used to clean to_abbreviate.
These two methods from the re module will return a list or a lazy iterator of results, respectively.
As of this writing, both of these methods benchmark slower than using str.replace() for cleaning.
Once the phrase is cleaned and turned into a word list, the acronym is created via the built-in map() function.
map() applies an anonymous function (the lambda in the code example) to all the items of an iterable ('mapping' the function 'onto' each item), returning a lazy iterator of results.
The application of the function travels from left to right, and function results are produced as needed.
Using code from the example above, map(lambda word: word[0], ["GNU", "IMAGE", "MANIPULATION", "PROGRAM"]) would calculate "GNU"[0], "IMAGE"[0], "MANIPULATION"[0], "PROGRAM"[0] in order as a stream of data.
word[0] is the function, which extracts the letter at index zero for every word in the phrase list.
This stream of data can then be 'consumed' — either in a loop, or by being 'unpacked' by another function or process.
Here, the iterator from map() is immediately consumed/unpacked by str.join(), which glues the results together with an empty string to produce the acronym.
Since using join() with map() is fairly succinct, the combination is put directly on the return line to produce the acronym, rather than assigning and returning an intermediate variable.
In benchmarks, this solution performed about as well as the loops, reduce and list-comprehension approaches.