acora 1.0

Fast multi-keyword search engine for text strings

Author: Stefan Behnel

What is Acora?

Acora is ‘fgrep’ for Python, a fast multi-keyword text search engine.

Based on a set of keywords, it generates a search automaton (DFA) and runs it over string input, either unicode or bytes.

It is based on the Aho-Corasick algorithm and an NFA-to-DFA transformation.

Features

• works with unicode strings and byte strings

• about 2-3x as fast as Python’s regular expression engine

• finds overlapping matches, i.e. all matches of all keywords

• support for case insensitive search (~10x as fast as ‘re’)

• frees the GIL while searching

• additional (slow but short) pure Python implementation

• support for Python 2.5+ and 3.x

• support for searching in files

How do I use it?

Import the package:

>>> from acora import AcoraBuilder

Collect some keywords:

>>> builder = AcoraBuilder('ab', 'bc', 'de')
>>> builder.add('a', 'b')

Generate the Acora search engine:

>>> ac = builder.build()

Search a string for all occurrences:

>>> ac.findall('abc')
[('a', 0), ('ab', 0), ('b', 1), ('bc', 1)]
>>> ac.findall('abde')
[('a', 0), ('ab', 0), ('b', 1), ('de', 2)]