SPELL(1)SPELL(1)NAME
spell, spellin, spellout - find spelling errors
SYNOPSISspell [ option ] ... [ file ] ...
/usr/src/cmd/spell/spellin [ list ]
/usr/src/cmd/spell/spellout [ -d ] list
DESCRIPTION
Spell 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.
Spell ignores most troff, tbl and eqn(1) constructions.
Under the -v option, all words not literally in the spelling list are
printed, and plausible derivations from spelling list words are indi‐
cated.
Under the -b option, British spelling is checked. Besides preferring
centre, colour, speciality, travelled, etc., this option insists upon
-ise in words like standardise, Fowler and the OED to the contrary not‐
withstanding.
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 accumu‐
lated in the history file. The stop list filters out misspellings
(e.g. thier=thy-y+ier) that would otherwise pass.
Two routines help maintain the hash lists used by spell. Both expect a
list of words, one per line, from the standard input. Spellin 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. Spellout 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.
FILES
D=/usr/dict/hlist[ab]: hashed spelling lists, American & British
S=/usr/dict/hstop: hashed stop list
H=/usr/dict/spellhist: history file
/usr/lib/spell
deroff(1), sort(1), tee(1), sed(1)BUGS
The spelling list's coverage is uneven; new installations will probably
wish to monitor the output for several months to gather local addi‐
tions.
British spelling was done by an American.
SPELL(1)
