spell(1)
NAME
spell, spellin, spellout − find spelling errors
SYNTAX
spell [ option... ] [ file... ]
/usr/lib/spellin [ list ]
/usr/lib/spellout [ −d ] list
DESCRIPTION
The spell command collects words from the named documents and looks them up in a spelling list. Words that neither occur among nor are derivable, by applying certain inflections, prefixes 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.
The spell command ignores most troff, tbl and eqn constructions.
Under the −v option, all words not literally in the spelling list are printed, and plausible derivations from spelling list words are indicated.
Under the −b option, British spelling is checked.
Under the −x option, every plausible stem is printed with ’=’ for each word.
The spelling list is based on many sources, and while more haphazard than an ordinary dictionary, is also more effective in 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. Copies of all output are accumulated in the history file. The stop list filters out misspellings that would otherwise pass. For example:
thier=thy−y+ier.
Two routines help maintain the hash lists used by spell. Both expect a list of words, one per line, from the standard input. The spellin command adds the words on the standard input to the preexisting list and places a new list on the standard output. If no list is specified, the new list is created from scratch. The spellout command looks up each word in the standard input and prints on the standard output those that are missing from (or present on, with option −d) the hash list.
Note: spell searches the user’s environment for variables of the form ’SPELL_X’, if found, it uses those by default.
EXAMPLES
To create the basic hashed spelling list:
cd /usr/lib; spellin < /usr/dict/words >hlist
To create the American hashed spelling list:
cd /usr/lib; (cat american local)|spellin hlist >hlista
To create the British hashed spelling list:
cd /usr/lib; (cat british local)|spellin hlist >hlistb
RESTRICTIONS
The spelling list’s coverage is uneven. New installations will probably wish to monitor the output for several months to gather local additions.
British spelling was done by an American.
FILES
SPELL_D=/usr/dict/hlist[ab]hashed spelling lists, American & British
SPELL_S=/usr/dict/hstophashed stop list
SPELL_H=/usr/dict/spellhisthistory file
/usr/dict/wordsfull dictionary
/usr/dict/americanamerican spelling
/usr/dict/britishbritish spelling
/usr/dict/locallocal spelling
/usr/lib/spell
/usr/lib/spellin
/usr/lib/spellout