spell(C)
spell, hashmake, spellin, hashcheck --
find spelling errors
Syntax
spell
[ -bilvx ] [ +local_file ]
[ file ... ]
/usr/lib/spell/hashmake
/usr/lib/spell/spellin n
/usr/lib/spell/hashcheck spelling_list
Description
spell collects words from the named files and
looks them up in a spelling list. Words that neither occur among nor
are derivable (by applying certain inflections, prefixes, and/or
suffixes) from words in the spelling list are printed on the
standard output. If no files are named, words are
collected from the standard input.
spell ignores most troff, tbl, and
eqn constructions.
spell recognizes the following options:
-b-
British spelling is checked. Besides preferring centre,
colour, labour, programme,
speciality, traveled, and so on, this option
insists upon the -ise ending for words like
standardise.
-i-
Ignore all chains of included files.
-l-
Follow the chains of all included files. By default,
spell follows chains of included files (.so and
.nx troff requests), unless the names
of such included files begin with /usr/lib.
-v-
Print all words not literally in the spelling list, and indicates
plausible derivations from the words in the spelling list.
-x-
Print every plausible stem with ``='' for each word.
+local_file-
Remove words found in local_file from spell's
output. local_file is the name of a user-provided file
that contains a sorted list of words, one per line. With this
option, you can specify a set of words that are correct spellings
for each job (in addition to spell's own spelling list).
The spelling list is based on many sources, and while more haphazard
than an ordinary dictionary, it is also more effective with respect
to proper names and popular technical words. Coverage of the
specialized vocabularies of biology, medicine, and chemistry is
light.
Pertinent auxiliary files may be specified by name arguments,
indicated below with their default settings (see ``Files''). Copies
of all output are accumulated in the history file. The stop list
filters out misspellings (for example, thier=thy-y+ier) that would
otherwise pass.
Three routines help maintain and check the hash lists used by
spell:
hashmake-
Reads a list of words from the standard input and writes the
corresponding nine-digit hash codes on the standard output.
spellin n-
Reads n hash codes from the standard input and writes a
compressed, or hashed spelling_list such as
/usr/lib/spell/hlista or /usr/lib/spell/hlistb,
on the standard output. Information about the hash coding is printed
on standard error.
hashcheck-
Reads a compressed, or hashed spelling_list, such as
/usr/lib/spell/hlista or /usr/lib/spell/hlistb,
and recreates the nine-digit hash codes for all the words in it,
writing these codes on the standard output.
Examples
The following example adds the words in
newwords to the on-line
dictionary (/usr/lib/spell/hlista).
cd /usr/lib/spell
cat newwords | ./hashmake | sort -u > newcodes
cat hlista | ./hashcheck > hashcodes
cat newcodes hashcodes | sort -u > newhash
cat newhash | ./spellin `cat newhash | wc -l` > hlist
mv hlista hlista.00
mv hlist hlista
Remember to remove all temporary files after you are sure everything
works.
Note that when you are manipulating large text, hash and hash code
files, you should use
cat(C)
to open the files, since they may be extremely large.
Limitations
The spelling list coverage is uneven; new installations will
probably wish to monitor the output for several months to gather
local additions; typically, these are kept in a separate local file
that is added to the hashed spelling_list via
spellin.
By default, logging of errors to /usr/lib/spell/spellhist
is turned on.
D_SPELL and S_SPELL can be overridden by placing
alternate definitions in your environment.
Files
D_SPELL=/usr/lib/spell/hlist[ab]-
hashed spelling lists, American & British
S_SPELL=/usr/lib/spell/hstop-
hashed stop list
H_SPELL=/usr/lib/spell/spellhist-
history file
/usr/lib/spell/spellprog-
program
See also
sed(C),
sort(C),
tee(C)
Standards conformance
spell is conformant with:
AT&T SVID Issue 2;
X/Open CAE Specification, Commands and Utilities, Issue 4, 1992: note that this command is marked as to be
withdrawn.
© 2003 Caldera International, Inc. All rights reserved.
SCO OpenServer Release 5.0.7 -- 11 February 2003