Part 4/7:
The core of the project involves transforming Wikipedia data for indexing:
He utilizes a plaintext Wikipedia repository.
Implements Python scripts for data cleaning and parsing.
Data Cleaning with Regex
A critical aspect of handling Wikipedia data is efficient cleaning:
Use of regular expressions (regex) to remove links, images, audio files, and other markup.
Regex over wiki text parser and html-to-text for speed:
Capable of processing approximately 20 articles per second.
Significantly faster than traditional parsing methods that may take 5-10 seconds per article.
Remaining challenges include parsing complex Wikipedia tables, which are yet to be optimally handled.