NAME

spell, hashmake, spellin, hashcheck − find spelling errors

SYNOPSIS

spell [ −v ] [ −b ] [ −x ] [ −l ] [ +local_file ] [ files ]

/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(1), tbl(1), and eqn(1) constructions.

Under the −v option, all words not literally in the spelling list are printed, and plausible derivations from the words in the spelling list are indicated. 

Under the −b option, British spelling is checked.  Besides preferring centre, colour, programme, speciality, travelled, etc., this option insists upon -ise in words like standardise, Fowler and the OED to the contrary notwithstanding. 

Under the −x option, every plausible stem is printed with = for each word. 

By default, spell (like deroff(1)) follows chains of included files (.so and .nx troff(1) requests), unless the names of such included files begin with /usr/lib.  Under the −l option, spell will follow the chains of all included files. 

Under the +local_file option, words found in local_file are removed 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, the user can specify a set of words that are correct spellings (in addition to spell’s own spelling list) for each job.

The spelling list is based on many sources, and while more haphazard than an ordinary dictionary, 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 (e.g., 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 code on the standard output. 

spellin Reads n hash codes from the standard input and writes a compressed spelling list on the standard output. 

hashcheck
Reads a compressed spelling_list and recreates the nine-digit hash codes for all the words in it; it writes these codes on the standard output. 

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

deroff(1), eqn(1), sed(1), sort(1), tbl(1), tee(1), troff(1). 

BUGS

The spelling list’s 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.

September 02, 1992