Disappearance

#! /usr/bin/env python
 
 
# Copyright 2010 the Active Archives contributors.
# See the file AUTHORS for more details.
 
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 
 
import sys
import re
from optparse import OptionParser
from textwrap import dedent
 
 
# inits usage and arguments
usage = "usage: %prog in.srt > out.srt"
parser = OptionParser(usage=usage)
(options, args) = parser.parse_args()
 
# checks the arguments length
if len(args) != 1:
    parser.error("incorrect number of arguments")
 
# opens the subtitle file and reads its content
try:
    f = open(args[0], 'r')
except IOError:
    sys.exit(dedent("""\
        Error: I can't open your subtitle file.
        Are you sure it exists?\
    """))
else:
    subtitles = f.read()
    f.close()
 
pattern = re.compile(r'[a-zA-Z]+', re.UNICODE)  # creates a pattern to search words
 
used_words = []
new_text = ""
previous_end = 0
 
# replaces all the occurrences of the words but the first one
for match in pattern.finditer(subtitles):
    new_text += subtitles[previous_end:match.start()]
    word = match.group()
    if word.lower() in used_words:
        #new_text += "*{w}*".format(w=word)
        #new_text += "<del>{w}</del>".format(w=word)
        #new_text += "--{w}--".format(w=word)
        new_text += "{w}".format(w="".ljust(len(word), " "))
    else:
        new_text += word
        used_words.append(word.lower())
    previous_end = match.end()
new_text += subtitles[previous_end:len(subtitles)]
 
print(new_text)