Fix: Preserve punctuation in tokenization to prevent skill collisions…

[desireddymohithreddy0925]

Summary

This PR fixes issue #1169 where the ML similarity tokenization function stripped out critical punctuation from skills like "C++" and "C#". The _tokenize() function was using a regex (r"[a-z0-9]+") that ignored symbols like +, #, ., and -, causing different skills to incorrectly match as identical tokens. By updating the regex to r"[a-z0-9\+#\.-]+", meaning-bearing symbols in programming languages are now correctly preserved, resulting in accurate similarity scoring.

Related Issue

Closes #1169

Type of Change

• Bug fix — resolves a broken behaviour
• Feature — adds new functionality
• Data — adds new projects to data/projects.json
• Documentation — updates docs, README, or code comments only
• Style — CSS or visual changes only, no logic change
• Refactor — restructures code without changing behaviour
• Test — adds or updates tests

What Was Changed

File	Change made
src/utils/recommender.py	Updated the regex in _tokenize() from r"[a-z0-9]+" to r"[a-z0-9\+#\.-]+" to preserve important symbols commonly found in programming languages.

How to Test This PR

1. Clone this branch: git checkout fix/issue-1169-tokenize-punctuation
2. Install dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt
3. Run the app: python app.py
4. Add a test project that requires "C++", then submit a user request with the skill "C#". The similarity score should no longer incorrectly return a near 100% match.
5. Run the tests: python tests/test_basic.py (or pytest tests/test_basic.py)

Expected test output:

27 passed, 0 failed out of 27 tests

Test Results

============================= test session starts ==============================
platform darwin -- Python 3.x.x, pytest-x.x.x, pluggy-x.x.x
rootdir: /Users/desireddymohithreddy/GSSOC2026DevPath/DevPathMRD
collected 27 items                                                             

tests/test_basic.py ...........................                          [100%]

============================== 27 passed in 0.12s ==============================

Self-Review Checklist

• I have read CONTRIBUTING.md and followed all guidelines
• My branch name follows the convention: feat/, fix/, docs/, data/, style/, test/
• I have run python tests/test_basic.py and all 27 tests pass
• I have run flake8 . locally and there are no errors
• I have not introduced any print() or console.log() debug statements
• Every new function I wrote has a docstring
• I have not modified files outside the scope of the linked issue
• If I changed the UI, I tested it at 375px (mobile) and 1280px (desktop)
• If I added a project to the dataset, it has all required JSON fields

Notes for Reviewer

None

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[komalharshita]

@desireddymohithreddy0925 kindly resolve the merge conflicts asap

[desireddymohithreddy0925]

@komalharshita done mam