IBP banding data system: Internal maintenance specification

Because the spec2004, spec2002, and spec1998 scripts are almost identical, we embody the logic of these scripts in a class called SpeciesSearcher

Here is the interface to the class:

# - - - - -   c l a s s   S p e c i e s S e a r c h e r   - - - - -

class SpeciesSearcher:
    '''Logic to search a species authority file.

      Exports:
        SpeciesSearcher(speciesSet, target):
          [ (speciesSet is a BaseSpeciesSet object) and
            (target is a string) ->
              return a new SpeciesSearcher object with those
              values ]
        .run():
          [ if self.target contains exactly 4 letters ->
              sys.stdout  +:=  report on self.target matching a
                  4-letter species code in self.speciesSet, if any
            else if target contains exactly 6 letters ->
              sys.stdout  +:=  report on self.target matching a
                  6-letter species code in self.speciesSet, if any
            else if self.target is not a valid regular expression->
              sys.stdout  +:=  error message
            else ->
              sys.stdout  +:=  report on any matches of English
                  names in self.speciesSet, treating self.target as a
                  Python regular expression ]

      State/Invariants:
        .speciesSet:    [ as passed to constructor, read-only ]
        .target:        [ as passed to constructor, read-only ]
    '''

#================================================================
# Manifest constants
#----------------------------------------------------------------

    FOUR_LETTER_PAT = re.compile (
        r'[a-zA-Z]{4}'       # Matches exactly four letters
        r'$')                # Insure all characters match
    SIX_LETTER_PAT = re.compile (
        r'[a-zA-Z]{6}'       # Matches exactly six letters
        r'$')                # Insure all characters match