# David Wallace
# Homework 3.1: check spelling of words in input.txt

# Unfortunately I didn't find a partner, so
# I wrote 'speling' first, then the checker of 'input.txt'.

import re

dictfile = "dict.txt"
dictdata = None

def correct(word):
    """Decide if a word is spelled correctly"""
    loaddict()
    for dictword in dictdata:
        if word == dictword or word.lower() == dictword:
            return True
    return False

def split_text_to_words(text):
    """Convert string to list of words, ignoring punctuation"""
    notword = re.compile("[^a-zA-Z']")    
    return notword.sub(' ',text).split() # convert non-word chars to spaces


# This should be a private function somehow.
def loaddict():
    """Read dictionary file into memory, if not already present."""
    global dictdata
    if not dictdata:
        print "loading dictionary..."
        file = open(dictfile, 'r')
        dictdata = file.readlines()
        #for word in dictdata: word = word.strip()  # why doesn't this work?
        dictdata = [word.strip() for word in dictdata] 
        file.close()