#!/usr/bin/python
"""
A relatively simple script that makes use of a dictionary.com CGI script
to build a command-line tool that returns the definition of a given word.
This uses the Python HTML parser modules. Python is just so cool. ;-)
"""

import sys, string, re
import urllib, httplib
from formatter import AbstractFormatter, DumbWriter
from htmllib import HTMLParser

if len(sys.argv) < 2:
	print "Usage: %s <word>" % (sys.argv[0])
	print "Where: <word> is the dictionary word you want to look up the"
	print "       definition of."
	print "The word is fetched from the dictionary.com web site."
	sys.exit(1)

BaseURL = "http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term="

try:
	ef = urllib.urlopen(BaseURL + urllib.quote_plus(string.strip(sys.argv[1])))
except:
	print "Cannot open URL."
	sys.exit(1)

entry = ef.readlines()
ef.close()

# The CGI output marks the beginning and end of each definition with these
# markers.  Take advantage of it to remove advertisements and junk. 8-)

re_start = re.compile(r'resultItemStart')
re_end = re.compile(r'resultItemEnd')

parsehtml = HTMLParser(AbstractFormatter(DumbWriter()))

printflag = 0

for line in entry:
	if re_start.search(line) != None:
		printflag = 1
	if re_end.search(line) != None:
		printflag = 0
		parsehtml.feed('<br><hr>')
	if printflag:
		parsehtml.feed(line)


# vim:ts=4:sw=4