class_docstr: Re-implementation of Tercom Tokenizer in Python 3.
  
  See src/ter/core/Normalizer.java in https://github.com/jhclark/tercom Note that Python doesn't support named Unicode
  blocks so the mapping for relevant blocks was taken from here: https://unicode-table.com/en/blocks/
  
  This implementation follows the implementation from
  https://github.com/mjpost/sacrebleu/blob/master/sacrebleu/tokenizers/tokenizer_ter.py.
docstr: Apply a language-independent (general) tokenization.
docstr_tok: ["Apply","a","language-independent","(","general",")","tokenization","."]
code: def _normalize_general_and_western(sentence: str) -> str:
      """Apply a language-independent (general) tokenization."""
      sentence = f" {sentence} "
      rules = [
          (r"\n-", ""),
          # join lines
          (r"\n", " "),
          # handle XML escaped symbols
          (r"&quot;", '"'),
          (r"&amp;", "&"),
          (r"&lt;", "<"),
          (r"&gt;", ">"),
          # tokenize punctuation
          (r"([{-~[-` -&(-+:-@/])", r" \1 "),
          # handle possessive
          (r"'s ", r" 's "),
          (r"'s$", r" 's"),
          # tokenize period and comma unless preceded by a digit
          (r"([^0-9])([\.,])", r"\1 \2 "),
          # tokenize period and comma unless followed by a digit
          (r"([\.,])([^0-9])", r" \1 \2"),
          # tokenize dash when preceded by a digit
          (r"([0-9])(-)", r"\1 \2 "),
      ]
      for pattern, replacement in rules:
          sentence = re.sub(pattern, replacement, sentence)
  
      return sentence
  
imports: import re
  from functools import lru_cache
  from typing import Dict, Iterator, List, Optional, Sequence, Tuple, Type, Union
  from torch import Tensor, tensor
  from torchmetrics.functional.text.helper import _flip_trace, _LevenshteinEditDistance, _trace_to_alignment, _validate_inputs
label_desc: Use image node_id 3 for calling the _TercomTokenizer obj's underlying member method code with example usage: obj._normalize_general_and_western(sentence) and returns: sentence