How can I split a text into sentences?

This function can split the entire text of Huckleberry Finn into sentences in about 0.1 seconds and handles many of the more painful edge cases that make sentence parsing non-trivial e.g. "Mr. John Johnson Jr. was born in the U.S.A but earned his Ph.D. in Israel before joining Nike Inc. as an engineer. He also worked at craigslist.org as a business analyst."

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import re
alphabets= "([A-Za-z])"
prefixes = "(Mr|St|Mrs|Ms|Dr)[.]"
suffixes = "(Inc|Ltd|Jr|Sr|Co)"
starters = "(Mr|Mrs|Ms|Dr|He\s|She\s|It\s|They\s|Their\s|Our\s|We\s|But\s|However\s|That\s|This\s|Wherever)"
acronyms = "([A-Z][.][A-Z][.](?:[A-Z][.])?)"
websites = "[.](com|net|org|io|gov)"
digits = "([0-9])"

def split_into_sentences(text):
    text = " " + text + "  "
    text = text.replace("\n"," ")
    text = re.sub(prefixes,"\\1<prd>",text)
    text = re.sub(websites,"<prd>\\1",text)
    text = re.sub(digits + "[.]" + digits,"\\1<prd>\\2",text)
    if "..." in text: text = text.replace("...","<prd><prd><prd>")
    if "Ph.D" in text: text = text.replace("Ph.D.","Ph<prd>D<prd>")
    text = re.sub("\s" + alphabets + "[.] "," \\1<prd> ",text)
    text = re.sub(acronyms+" "+starters,"\\1<stop> \\2",text)
    text = re.sub(alphabets + "[.]" + alphabets + "[.]" + alphabets + "[.]","\\1<prd>\\2<prd>\\3<prd>",text)
    text = re.sub(alphabets + "[.]" + alphabets + "[.]","\\1<prd>\\2<prd>",text)
    text = re.sub(" "+suffixes+"[.] "+starters," \\1<stop> \\2",text)
    text = re.sub(" "+suffixes+"[.]"," \\1<prd>",text)
    text = re.sub(" " + alphabets + "[.]"," \\1<prd>",text)
    if "”" in text: text = text.replace(".”","”.")
    if "\"" in text: text = text.replace(".\"","\".")
    if "!" in text: text = text.replace("!\"","\"!")
    if "?" in text: text = text.replace("?\"","\"?")
    text = text.replace(".",".<stop>")
    text = text.replace("?","?<stop>")
    text = text.replace("!","!<stop>")
    text = text.replace("<prd>",".")
    sentences = text.split("<stop>")
    sentences = sentences[:-1]
    sentences = [s.strip() for s in sentences]
    return sentences

The Natural Language Toolkit (nltk.org) has what you need. This group posting indicates this does it:

import nltk.data

tokenizer = nltk.data.load('tokenizers/punkt/english.pickle')
fp = open("test.txt")
data = fp.read()
print '\n-----\n'.join(tokenizer.tokenize(data))

(I haven't tried it!)