Recursively splitting by character

Many developers are using a recursive character splitter to split documents based on a specific list of characters. These characters are paragraphs, newlines, spaces, and empty strings, by default: ["\n\n", "\n", " ", ""].

Effectively, the splitter tries to split by paragraphs, checks to see if the chunk_size and chunk_overlap values are met, and if not, splits by sentences, then words, and individual characters.

Often, you'll need to experiment with different chunk_size and chunk_overlap values to find the ones that work well for your documents.

This exercise is part of the course

Developing LLM Applications with LangChain

Exercise instructions

Import the RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter class from langchain_text_splitters.
Create a RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter instance with separators=["\n", " ", ""], chunk_size=24, and chunk_overlap=10.
Use the .split_text() method to split the quote and print the chunks and chunk lengths.

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Import the recursive character splitter
from langchain_text_splitters import ____

quote = 'Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,\nthey slither while they pass,\nthey slip away across the universe.'
chunk_size = 24
chunk_overlap = 10

# Create an instance of the splitter class
splitter = RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter(
    separators=____,
    chunk_size=____,
    chunk_overlap=____)

# Split the document and print the chunks
docs = splitter.____(quote)
print(docs)
print([len(doc) for doc in docs])

Edit and Run Code

This exercise is part of the course

Developing LLM Applications with LangChain

IntermediateSkill Level

4.8+

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Welcome to the LangChain framework for building applications on LLMs! You'll learn about the main components of LangChain, including models, chains, agents, prompts, and parsers. You'll create chatbots using both open-source models from Hugging Face and proprietary models from OpenAI, create prompt templates, and integrate different chatbot memory strategies to manage context and resources during conversations.

Exercise 1: The LangChain ecosystem Exercise 2: OpenAI models in LangChain!Exercise 3: Hugging Face models in LangChain!Exercise 4: Prompt templates Exercise 5: Prompt templates and chaining Exercise 6: Chat prompt templates Exercise 7: Few-shot prompting Exercise 8: Creating the few-shot example set Exercise 9: Building the few-shot prompt template Exercise 10: Implementing few-shot prompting

Time to level up your LangChain chains! You'll learn to use the LangChain Expression Language (LCEL) for defining chains with greater flexibility. You'll create sequential chains, where inputs are passed between components to create more advanced applications. You'll also begin to integrate agents, which use LLMs for decision-making.

Exercise 1: Sequential chains Exercise 2: Building prompts for sequential chains Exercise 3: Sequential chains with LCEL Exercise 4: Introduction to LangChain agents Exercise 5: What's an agent?Exercise 6: ReAct agents Exercise 7: Custom tools for agents Exercise 8: Defining a function for tool use Exercise 9: Creating custom tools Exercise 10: Integrating custom tools with agents

One limitation of LLMs is that they have a knowledge cut-off due to being trained on data up to a certain point. In this chapter, you'll learn to create applications that use Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to integrate external data with LLMs. The RAG workflow contains a few different processes, including splitting data, creating and storing the embeddings using a vector database, and retrieving the most relevant information for use in the application. You'll learn to master the entire workflow!

Exercise 1: Integrating document loaders Exercise 2: PDF document loaders Exercise 3: CSV document loaders Exercise 4: HTML document loaders Exercise 5: Splitting external data for retrieval Exercise 6: Splitting by character Exercise 7: Recursively splitting by character

Current Exercise

Exercise 8: Splitting HTML Exercise 9: RAG storage and retrieval using vector databases Exercise 10: Preparing the documents and vector database Exercise 11: Building a retrieval prompt template Exercise 12: Creating a RAG chain Exercise 13: Wrap-up!