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Natural Language Toolkit - Getting Started
In order to install NLTK, we must have Python installed on our computers. You can go to the link
[Link]/downloads and select the latest version for your OS i.e. Windows, Mac and
Linux/Unix. For basic tutorial on Python you can refer to the link
[Link]/python3/[Link].
Now, once you have Python installed on your computer system, let us understand how we can install
NLTK.
Installing NLTK
We can install NLTK on various OS as follows −
On Windows
In order to install NLTK on Windows OS, follow the below steps −
First, open the Windows command prompt and navigate to the location of the pip folder.
Next, enter the following command to install NLTK −
pip3 install nltk
Now, open the PythonShell from Windows Start Menu and type the following command in order to
verify NLTK’s installation −
Import nltk
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If you get no error, you have successfully installed NLTK on your Windows OS having Python3.
On Mac/Linux
In order to install NLTK on Mac/Linux OS, write the following command −
sudo pip install -U nltk
If you don’t have pip installed on your computer, then follow the instruction given below to first install
pip −
First, update the package index by following using following command −
sudo apt update
Now, type the following command to install pip for python 3 −
sudo apt install python3-pip
Through Anaconda
In order to install NLTK through Anaconda, follow the below steps −
First, to install Anaconda, go to the link [Link] and then select the
version of Python you need to install.
Once you have Anaconda on your computer system, go to its command prompt and write the
following command −
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conda install -c anaconda nltk
You need to review the output and enter ‘yes’. NLTK will be downloaded and installed in your
Anaconda package.
Downloading NLTK’s Dataset and Packages
Now we have NLTK installed on our computers but in order to use it we need to download the
datasets (corpus) available in it. Some of the important datasets available are stpwords, guntenberg,
framenet_v15 and so on.
With the help of following commands, we can download all the NLTK datasets −
import nltk
[Link]()
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You will get the following NLTK downloaded window.
Now, click on the download button to download the datasets.
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How to run NLTK script?
Following is the example in which we are implementing Porter Stemmer algorithm by using
PorterStemmer nltk class. with this example you would be able to understand how to run NLTK script.
First, we need to import the natural language toolkit(nltk).
import nltk
Now, import the PorterStemmer class to implement the Porter Stemmer algorithm.
from [Link] import PorterStemmer
Next, create an instance of Porter Stemmer class as follows −
word_stemmer = PorterStemmer()
Now, input the word you want to stem. −
word_stemmer.stem('writing')
Output
'write'
word_stemmer.stem('eating')
Output
'eat'
