preprocessing.py

# Dealing with long docs:
max_length = 384 # The maximum length of a feature (question and context)
doc_stride = 128 # The authorized overlap between two part of the context when splitting it 

def prepare_train_features(examples):
    # Tokenize our examples with truncation and padding, but keep the overflows using a stride. This results
    # in one example possible giving several features when a context is long, each of those features having a
    # context that overlaps a bit the context of the previous feature.
    tokenized_examples = tokenizer(
        examples["question" ],
        examples["context" ],
        truncation="only_second",
        max_length=max_length,
        stride=doc_stride,
        return_overflowing_tokens=True,
        return_offsets_mapping=True,
        padding="max_length",
    )

    # Since one example might give us several features if it has a long context, we need a map from a feature to
    # its corresponding example. This key gives us just that.
    # Looks like [0,1,2,2,2,3,4,5,5...] - Here 2nd input pair has been split in 3 parts
    sample_mapping = tokenized_examples.pop("overflow_to_sample_mapping")
    # The offset mappings will give us a map from token to character position in the original context. This will
    # help us compute the start_positions and end_positions.
    # Looks like [[(0,0),(0,3),(3,4)...] ] - Contains the actual start indices and end indices for each word in the input. 
    offset_mapping = tokenized_examples.pop("offset_mapping")

    # Let's label those examples!
    tokenized_examples["start_positions"] = []
    tokenized_examples["end_positions"] = []

    for i, offsets in enumerate(offset_mapping):
        # We will label impossible answers with the index of the CLS token.
        input_ids = tokenized_examples["input_ids"][i]
        cls_index = input_ids.index(tokenizer.cls_token_id)

        # Grab the sequence corresponding to that example (to know what is the context and what is the question).
        sequence_ids = tokenized_examples.sequence_ids(i)

        # One example can give several spans, this is the index of the example containing this span of text.
        sample_index = sample_mapping[i]
        answers = examples["answers"][sample_index]
        # If no answers are given, set the cls_index as answer.
        if len(answers["answer_start"]) == 0:
            tokenized_examples["start_positions"].append(cls_index)
            tokenized_examples["end_positions"].append(cls_index)
        else:
            # Start/end character index of the answer in the text.
            start_char = answers["answer_start"][0]
            end_char = start_char + len(answers["text"][0])

            # Start token index of the current span in the text.
            token_start_index = 0
            while sequence_ids[token_start_index] != 1:
                token_start_index += 1

            # End token index of the current span in the text.
            token_end_index = len(input_ids) - 1
            while sequence_ids[token_end_index] != 1:
                token_end_index -= 1

            # Detect if the answer is out of the span (in which case this feature is labeled with the CLS index).
            if not (offsets[token_start_index][0] <= start_char and offsets[token_end_index][1] >= end_char):
                tokenized_examples["start_positions"].append(cls_index)
                tokenized_examples["end_positions"].append(cls_index)
            else:
                # Otherwise move the token_start_index and token_end_index to the two ends of the answer.
                # Note: we could go after the last offset if the answer is the last word (edge case).
                while token_start_index < len(offsets) and offsets[token_start_index][0] <= start_char:
                    token_start_index += 1
                tokenized_examples["start_positions"].append(token_start_index - 1)
                while offsets[token_end_index][1] >= end_char:
                    token_end_index -= 1
                tokenized_examples["end_positions"].append(token_end_index + 1)

    return tokenized_examples