CPSC 091R. Special Topics: Computing with Text

Despite modern computers being largely driven by graphical interfaces, text-based user-interfaces---programs that get their input via human-readable text and provide their output via human-readable text---are incredibly powerful and pervasive. With the rise of large language models, the notion of commanding computers with natural language seems groundbreaking; however, computer scientists have long employed structured text that lives somewhere between general-purpose programming languages (e.g., C++ or Python) and natural languages (e.g., English or Chinese). This course will empower students to design, implement, and critique text-driven computer programs. Topics like the command-line (e.g., shells, redirection, pipes), scripting, scraping, text parsing & understanding, information retrieval, prompt engineering, searching with regular expressions, and semi-structured data formats (e.g. HTML, XML, JSON) will be covered. Students will learn how to prototype text-heavy applications with real-world data.
This is a Group 3 course.
Natural Science
1.0 credit.
Spring 2025. O'Hara. Wicentowski.
Catalog chapter: Computer Science
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/computer-science

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