Novar (v1.0)

A short name for NoVariations, made to be able to detect any v4r1ati0ns in text.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Installation
3. Simple Usage
4. Similarities of two strings with variations
5. Pronunciation similarities of two strings
6. Customizations

Introduction

Novar is a collection of functions that could be used for chat moderation and NLP. It is also highly customizable, allowing users to configure the functions.

Novar has five functions, which are: novar, compare, average_stuck_keyboard_enjoyer, text_variation, and pronunciation_similarity. Besides those, there are other accessible functions which were made for the functionality of novar, which you can find in the source code.

If you have anything to ask me directly, e-mail me or add me on Discord at Signetar#3735

Installation

Use the package manager pip to install Novar.

pip install novar

Simple Usage

I've combined (nearly) all functionalities of Novar into one function for accessibility.

novar(typed, target, groups=corresponding, softsounds=softsounds, ignored=ignored, delete_ignored=True) -> dict

Parameters

• typed : The 'typed' word. String that has variations in it.
• target : The original string that consists of alphabets only. It doesn't have any variations.
• groups : A list of tuples that have the same meaning in a string with variations, it's set to corresponding by default.
• softsounds : A list of characters that have 'soft' sounds. This includes vowels, and it determines which characters should be removed when finding the pronunciation similarities of two strings.
• ignored : A list of characters that get ignored when placed after a vowel.
• delete_ignored : Whether to delete characters in ignored or not when determining pronunciation similarity. It's set to True by default.

Examples

import novar

one, two = "4stat111ne33e", "astatine"
print(novar.novar(one, two))

Which would return:

{
    'text_variation' : {
        'Similarity' : 1.0
    },
    'pronunciation_similarity' : {
        'Similarity' : 0,
        'Error': 'One or more of the words contains non-alphabet characters.'
    }
}

As 4stat111ne33e is simply a variation (with a lot of special characters and spams) of astatine, text_variation is 1.0, meaning they are the same. However, as it contained special characters, pronunciation_similarity, a function designed for strings that only consist of alphabetic characters, would return an error.

For another use case:

one, two = "accede", "exceed"
print(novar.novar(one, two))

Would return

{
    'text_variation' : {
        'Similarity' : 0.0
    },
    'pronunciation_similarity' : {
        'Similarity' : 1.0,
        'Confidence' : 1.0
    }
}

As accede and exceed are two different words, text_variation would be 0, while pronunciation_similarity would be 1.0 with the confidence of 1.0, as the two words are homophones.

Text Similarity

There are two functions to perform this task, which are average_stuck_keyboard_enjoyer (made by screechingviolet) and text_variation. Keep in mind that both functions, despite working differently, can both handle recurring characters and special characters. The descriptions and use cases of both functions are shown below:

Average Stuck Keyboard Enjoyer

Returns True if what was typed is the target word, when recurring characters and stand-ins are disregarded.

Parameters

• typed : The 'typed' word. String that has variations in it.
• target : The original string that consists of alphabets only. It doesn't have any variations.
• corresponding : A dictionary it uses to convert special characters to alphabetic characters. Set to corresponding2 by default.

print(novar.average_stuck_keyboard_enjoyer('v4r14710ns', 'variations'))

Would return:

True

Text Variation

Returns a float value between 0 and 1 based on how similar typed is to target.

Parameters

• typed : The 'typed' word. String that has variations in it.
• target : The original string that consists of alphabets only. It doesn't have any variations.
• groups : Set to corresponding by default, a group of characters that have the same meaning in a string with variations.

print(novar.text_variation('v4r14710ns', 'variations'))

Would return

{'Similarity': 1.0}

And even with recurring special characters,

print(novar.text_variation('v4r1ationx', 'variations'))
print(novar.text_variation('v4444aAar1ationx', 'variations'))

The output would be the same.

{'Similarity': 0.9}
{'Similarity': 0.9}

Pronunciation Similarity

Although there are other algorithms such as Soundex, novar presents a different method to determine how similar two strings of characters sound when pronounced.

Similarity refers to how similar two strings sound, and Confidence shows how likely it is for the similarity score to be correct.

Usage

print(novar.pronunciation_similarity("masked", "masqued"))
print(novar.pronunciation_similarity("cue", "queue"))

{'Similarity': 1.0, 'Confidence': 1.0}
{'Similarity': 1.0, 'Confidence': 1.0}

What you see above are homophones, words that sound the same despite being spelt differently. Here are more examples:

print(novar.pronunciation_similarity("nature", "mature"))
print(novar.pronunciation_similarity("elephant", "jellyfish"))

{'Similarity': 0.5, 'Confidence': 1.0}
{'Similarity': 0.0, 'Confidence': 0.8}

Disclaimer

This function is not compatible with numeric or special characters, only alphabetic. Hence, when a string with numbers or special characters is inputted, it would simply return an error.

print(novar.pronunciation_similarity("impossible", "3mpossible"))

{'Similarity': 0, 'Error': 'One or more of the words contains non-alphabet characters.'}

But by using the compare function that comes with novar, you can try converting such characters to alphabetic characters.

print(novar.pronunciation_similarity("impossible", "empossible"))

{'Similarity': 1.0, 'Confidence': 1.0}

Customizations

Novar heavily relies on arrays of characters and nuances, and most of them were configured for general use and hence lack accuracy in some aspects. By tweaking them to fit your needs, the functions would perform much better.

Tweaking groups for text similarity

Two functions that process text with variations, average_stuck_keyboard_enjoyer and text_variation, use corresponding and corresponding2 respectively.

corresponding = [
    ('1', 'i', 'l', '!'),
    ('2', 'r'),
    ('3', 'e'),
    ('4', 'a', '@'),
    ('5', 's', '$'),
    ('6', 'b'),
    ('7', 't', '+'),
    ('0', 'o'),
    ('(', 'c')
]

corresponding2 = {
        'i': ['1', 'i', 'l', '!'],
        'l': ['1', 'i', 'l', '!'],
        'r': ['2', 'r'],
        'e': ['3', 'e'],
        'a': ['4', 'a', '@'],
        's': ['5', 's', '$'],
        'b': ['6', 'b'],
        't': ['7', 't', '+'],
        'o': ['0', 'o'],
        'c': ['(', 'c']
}

As seen above, both work differently. For the case of corresponding, elements its tuples are in the same group, and is recognised as the same character by it. Which means, Astat1ne and Astatine are the same as 1 and i are in the same group, and so on. In some cases, this wouldn't work very well, as l is also in the same group as i, and could lead to possible false positives.

For corresponding2, the value for a certain key contains a list of all the characters that could stand in for it, including the key itself.

Tweaking hardsounds, softsounds, ignored, and nuances for pronunciation similarity

pronunciation_similarity function uses four arrays to determine how similar two strings sound when pronounced. This is because it first gets rid of softsounds, nuances, and ignored by default.

hardsounds = ['b', 'c', 'd', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'p', 'q', 's', 't', 'v' ,'x', 'z', 'r'] # these won't be ignored
softsounds = ['a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', 'y', 'w'] # these 'soft' sounds are ignored
ignored = ['w', 'h', 'r',] #if this is not placed at the start or the end, it will be deleted

# These are nuances in pronunciations. Any second elements will be converted to their first elements. e.g. tia->sha, ph->f
nuances = (
    ('sha', 'tia'),
    ('f', 'ph'),
    ('c', 'k'),
    ('c', 'q'),
    ('u', 'oo'),
    ('e', 'i'),
    ('a', 'e'),
    ('s', 'z'),
    ('c', 'x')
)

A string is processed using these. It is best to configure softsounds, hardsounds and nuances according to the words you are trying to pick up, to put more emphasis on certain characters.