NAME

spell − find spelling errors

SYNOPSIS

spell [ −bivx ] [ +local_file ] [ file]...

AVAILABILITY

SUNWesu

DESCRIPTION

The spell command 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. Copies of all output are accumulated in the spellhist file. 

OPTIONS

The following options are supported:

−b British spelling is checked.  Besides preferring "centre," "colour," "programme," "speciality," "travelled," and so forth, this option insists upon −ise in words like "standardise."

−i This option causes deroff(1) to ignore .so and .nx commands.  If deroff(1) is not present on the system, then this option is ignored. 

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

−x Every plausible stem is displayed, one per line, with = preceding each word. 

+local_file 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.  Words found in local_file are removed from spell’s output.  Use sort(1) to order local_file in ASCII collating sequence.  If this ordering is not followed, some entries in local_file may be ignored. 

OPERANDS

The following operands are supported:

file A path name of a text file to check for spelling errors.  If no files are named, words are collected from the standard input. 

ENVIRONMENT

See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of spell: LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH. 

EXIT STATUS

The following exit values are returned:

0 Successful completion. 

>0 An error occurred. 

FILES

D_SPELL=/usr/lib/spell/hlist[ab] hashed spelling lists, American & British

S_SPELL=/usr/lib/spell/hstop hashed stop list

H_SPELL=/var/adm/spellhist history file

/usr/share/lib/dict/words master dictionary

SEE ALSO

deroff(1), sort(1), environ(5)

NOTES

Because copies of all output are accumulated in the spellhist file, spellhist may grow quite large and require purging. 

SunOS 5.5  —  Last change: 1 Feb 1995