1SPELL(1) General Commands Manual SPELL(1)
2
6 spell, spellin, spellout - find spelling errors
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9 spell [ -v ] [ -b ] [ -x ] [ -d hlist ] [ -s hstop ] [ -h spellhist ] [
10 file ] ...
11 spellin [ list ]
13 spellout [ -d ] list
15
17 Spell collects words from the named documents, and looks them up in a
18 spelling list. Words that neither occur among nor are derivable (by
19 applying certain inflections, prefixes or suffixes) from words in the
20 spelling list are printed on the standard output. If no files are
21 named, words are collected from the standard input.
22 Spell ignores most troff, tbl and eqn(1) constructions.
24 Under the -v option, all words not literally in the spelling list are
26 printed, and plausible derivations from spelling list words are indi‐
27 cated.
28 Under the -b option, British spelling is checked. Besides preferring
30 centre, colour, speciality, travelled, etc., this option insists upon
31 -ise in words like standardise, Fowler and the OED to the contrary not‐
32 withstanding.
33 Under the -x option, every plausible stem is printed with `=' for each
35 word.
36 The spelling list is based on many sources. While it is more haphazard
38 than an ordinary dictionary, it is also more effective with proper
39 names and popular technical words. Coverage of the specialized vocabu‐
40 laries of biology, medicine and chemistry is light.
41 The auxiliary files used for the spelling list, stop list, and history
43 file may be specified by arguments following the -d, -s, and -h
44 options. The default files are indicated below. Copies of all output
45 may be accumulated in the history file. The stop list filters out mis‐
46 spellings (e.g. thier=thy-y+ier) that would otherwise pass.
47 Two routines help maintain the hash lists used by spell. Both expect a
49 set of words, one per line, from the standard input. Spellin combines
50 the words from the standard input and the preexisting list file and
51 places a new list on the standard output. If no list file is speci‐
52 fied, the new list is created from scratch. Spellout looks up each
53 word from the standard input and prints on the standard output those
54 that are missing from (or present on, with option -d) the hashed list
55 file. For example, to verify that hookey is not on the default spell‐
56 ing list, add it to your own private list, and then use it with spell,
57 echo hookey | spellout /usr/dict/hlista
59 echo hookey | spellin /usr/dict/hlista > myhlist
60 spell -d myhlist huckfinn
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63 /usr/dict/hlist[ab] hashed spelling lists, American & British, default
64 for -d
65 /usr/dict/hstop hashed stop list, default for -s
66 /dev/null history file, default for -h
67 /tmp/spell.$$∗ temporary files
68 /usr/libexec/spell
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71 deroff(1), sort(1), tee(1), sed(1)
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74 The spelling list's coverage is uneven; new installations will probably
75 wish to monitor the output for several months to gather local addi‐
76 tions.
77 British spelling was done by an American.
787th Edition October 22, 1996 SPELL(1)