"""Caption text preprocessing. Mirrors the IEEE notebook cell 3:: def preprocess(text): text = text.lower() text = re.sub(r"[^\\w\\s]", "", text) text = re.sub("\\s+", " ", text) text = text.strip() text = "[start] " + text + " [end]" return text Why pull this out of the notebook: * It's a *pure function*: same input → same output, no side effects. Easiest possible thing to unit-test, and the lowest-risk module to verify parity on (one ``assert preprocess_caption("Hello, World!") == "[start] hello world [end]"`` catches any divergence). * The same logic runs at training time AND at inference time. Centralising it eliminates the most common bug source in ML systems: train/serve skew. """ from __future__ import annotations import re START_TOKEN = "[start]" END_TOKEN = "[end]" # Pre-compiled for marginal speed (caption preprocessing is called ~600k+ # times during dataset prep). The compiled patterns also make intent obvious. _PUNCTUATION_RE = re.compile(r"[^\w\s]") _WHITESPACE_RE = re.compile(r"\s+") def preprocess_caption(text: str) -> str: """Lowercase, strip punctuation, collapse whitespace, wrap with sentinels. Behaviour is byte-for-byte identical to the notebook's ``preprocess()``. Args: text: Raw caption string (any case, may contain punctuation). Returns: Normalised caption with ``[start]`` and ``[end]`` sentinels, e.g.:: >>> preprocess_caption("A man, riding a Bike!") '[start] a man riding a bike [end]' Note: The notebook applies this function via ``DataFrame.apply``; we don't vectorise here because the regex compilation is the dominant cost and is already amortised over a single call. """ text = text.lower() text = _PUNCTUATION_RE.sub("", text) text = _WHITESPACE_RE.sub(" ", text) text = text.strip() return f"{START_TOKEN} {text} {END_TOKEN}"