NAME

spell, spellin, spellout − report spelling errors

SYNOPSIS

spell [ −bvx ] [ −d hlist ] [ −s hstop ] [ −h spellhist ] [ filename ] ...

spellin [ inlist ]

spellout [ −d ] outlist

DESCRIPTION

spell collects words from the named files, and looks them up in a hashed spelling list derived from the system dictionary.  Words that do not appear in the list, or cannot be derived from those that do appear by applying certain inflections, prefixes or suffixes, are displayed on the standard output. 

If there are no filename arguments, words to check are collected from the standard input.  spell ignores most troff(1), tbl(1), and eqn(1) constructs.  Copies of all output words are accumulated in the history file, and a stop list filters out misspellings (for example, thier=thy−y+ier) that would otherwise pass. 

The standard 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. 

spellin adds words from the standard input to a hashed spelling list, and writes the resulting hashed list to the standard output.  If an inlist argument is supplied, the input words are hashed together with that existing spelling list.  If not, spellin creates a new list from scratch. 

spellout looks up each word from the standard input, compares them with outlist, and displays those that are missing from that list.  With the −d option, spellout displays input words that appear in the list. 

OPTIONS

−b Check British spelling.  Besides preferring “centre”, “colour”, “travelled”, and so on, this option insists upon -ise in words like standardize, despite what Fowler and the OED say. 

−v Print all words not literally in the spelling list, as well as plausible derivations from spelling list words. 

−x Print every plausible stem with ‘=’ for each word. 

−d hlist
Use the file hlist as the hashed spelling list. 

−s hstop
Use hstop as the hashed stop list. 

−h spellhist
Place misspelled words with a user/date stamp in file spellhist.

FILES

/usr/dict/hlist[ab] hashed spelling lists, American & British

/usr/dict/hstop hashed stop list

/usr/dict/words system dictionary—list of properly spelled words and roots

/usr/lib/spell program called by the /usr/bin/spell shell script

NOTE

Misspelled words can be monitored by default by setting the H variable in /usr/bin/spell to the name of a file that has permission mode 666. 

SEE ALSO

deroff(1), sed(1V), sort(1V), tee(1)

BUGS

The spelling list’s coverage is uneven; new installations may wish to monitor the output for several months to gather local additions. 

British spelling was done by an American. 

Sun Release 4.0  —  Last change: 5 January 1988