spell
PURPOSE
Finds spelling errors.
SYNOPSIS
spell [-i] [-v] [-b] [-x] [-l] [+wordlist] [file]
/usr/lib/spell/hashmake
/usr/lib/spell/spellin [ num ]
/usr/lib/spell/hashcheck [ spellinglist ]
DESCRIPTION
The spell command reads words in file and compares them
to those in a spelling list. Words that cannot be
matched in the spelling list or derived from words in the
spelling list (by applying certain inflections, prefixes,
and/or suffixes) are written to standard output. If you
do not specify a file to read, spell reads standard
input.
The spell command ignores the same troff, tbl, and eqn
constructs as the deroff command.
The coverage of the spelling list is uneven. You should
create your own dictionary of special words used in your
files.
Certain auxiliary files can be specified by file name
parameters; see "Files" Copies of all output are accumu-
lated in the history file.
Three routines help maintain and check the hash lists
used by spell.
/usr/lib/spell/hashmake Reads a list of
words from
standard input and
writes the corre-
sponding nine-
digit hash code to
standard output.
/usr/lib/spell/spellin num Reads num hash
codes from
standard input and
writes a com-
pressed spelling
list to standard
output.
/usr/lib/spell/hashcheck spellinglist Reads a compressed
spellinglist and
recreates the
nine-digit hash
codes for all the
words in it; it
writes these codes
to standard
output.
FLAGS
-b Checks British spelling.
-i Suppresses processing of included files.
-l Follows the chain of all included files
(.so and .nx formatting commands). Without
this flag, spell follows chains of all
included files except for those beginning
with /usr/lib.
-v Displays all words not literally in the
spelling list and indicates plausible deri-
vations from the words.
-x Displays every plausible word stem with an
= (equal sign).
+wordlist Checks wordlist for additional word
spellings. wordlist is the name of a file
you provide that contains a sorted list of
words, one per line. With this flag, you
can specify a set of correctly spelled
words (in addition to spell's own spelling
list) for each job.
EXAMPLES
1. To check your spelling:
spell chap1 >mistakes
This creates a file named "mistakes" containing all
the words found in "chap1" that are not in the system
spelling dictionary. Some of these may be correctly
spelled words that spell does not know about. It is
a good idea to save the output of spell in a file
because the word list may be long.
2. To check British spelling:
spell -b chap1 >mistakes
This checks "chap1" against the British dictionary
and writes the questionable words in "mistakes".
3. To see how spell derives words:
spell -v chap1 >deriv
This lists the words that are not found literally in
the dictionary, but are derived forms of dictionary
words. The prefixes and suffixes used to form the
derivative are indicated for each word. Words that
do not appear in the dictionary at all are also
listed.
4. To check your spelling against an additional word
list:
spell +newwords chap1
This checks the spelling of words in "chap1" against
the system dictionary and against "newwords". The
file "newwords" lists words in alphabetical order,
one per line. You can create this file with a text
editor, such as ed, and alphabetize it with the sort
command.
FILES
D_SPELL=/usr/lib/spell/hlist[ab] Hashed spelling lists,
American and British.
S_SPELL=/usr/lib/spell/hstop Hashed stop list.
H_SPELL=/usr/lib/spell/spellhist History file.
/usr/lib/compress Executable shell
program to compress
the history file.
/usr/lib/spell/spellprog Program.
RELATED INFORMATION
The following commands: "deroff," "eqn, neqn, checkeq,"
"sed," "sort," "tbl," "tee," and "troff."