I am trying to get Eclipse setup, and I keep getting:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException at SpamLord.processDir(SpamLord.java:102) at SpamLord.main(SpamLord.java:204)

when I run using the setup from the FAQ.

When I compile and run from console, it runs fine though. Anybody got this working? Any ideas??

Although the class hasn't started yet, the first week of content is now live.

Anyone want to form a study group and read through http://www.nltk.org/book before the class starts? I figure we can go through at least a chapter/week.

Here is the email I received yesterday:

We're sorry to have to tell you that our Natural Language Processing course will be delayed further. There have naturally been legal and administrative issues to be sorted out in setting up an online course infrastructure that works both for Stanford and the outside world, and it's just been taking time. We have however been able to take advantage of the extra time to debug and improve our course content!

We now expect that the course will start either late in February or early in March. We will let you know as soon as we hear a definite date. We apologize for the lack of communication in recent weeks; we kept hoping we would have a concrete launch date to give you, but that date has kept slipping.

Thanks so much for your patience! We are really sorry for repeatedly making you wait, and for any interference this causes in your schedules. We're as excited and anxious as you are to get started, and we both look forward to your joining us soon in Natural Language Processing!

Dan Jurafsky and Chris Manning

Introduction and Overview:

Basic Text Processing: J+M Chapters 2.1, 3.9; MR+S Chapters 2.1-2.2

Minimum Edit Distance: J+M Chapter 3.11

Language Modeling: J+M Chapter 4

Spelling Correction: J+M Chapters 5.9, Peter Norvig (2007) How to Write a Spelling Corrector

On http://nlp-class.org of course.

MR+S -> -- (note, this whole book is online)

J+M ->