A quiestion from a mx.TextTools newbie

Hello Friends,

I'm new to mx.TextTools & am learning this powerful tool by reading David Mertz's excellent book "Text Processing in Python".  Naturally I tried the examples in the book.  One particular example concerning mx.TextTools is the one under "mx.TextTools.AppendTagobj" on Page 307.

Unfortunately, that example from David's book doesn't work.  I was able to tweak the code to make it work.  But I was puzzled why it doesn't work.  I attach the segment of codes here.

#--- example code starts
from mx.TextTools import *

#--- 1st approach: failure
words = (('word', AllIn+AppendTagobj, alpha),
(None, AllIn, whitespace, MatchFail, -1))
tag('this and that', words)

#--- 2nd approach: success
words = (('word', AllIn, alpha),
(None, AllIn, whitespace, +1),
(None,EOF,Here,-2))
tag('this and that', words)

#--- 3rd approach: success
word = []
def emiter(tl,txt,l,r,s):
    word.append(txt[l:r])

words = ((emiter, AllIn+CallTag, alpha),
(None, AllIn, whitespace, MatchFail, -1))
tag('this and that', words)
#--- example code ends

Can someone provide me some insight why the 1st approach doesn't work while the 2nd & 3rd work?  BTW, I'm using mx.TextTools 3.1.2 on Windows.

Thanks much.

Best,
Wenping Wang


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