SPELL(1) SPELL(1)
NAME
spell, spellin, spellout - find spelling errors
SYNOPSIS
spell [ 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 col-
lected 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 indicated.
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 notwithstanding.
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 effec-
tive in respect to proper names and popular technical words.
Coverage of the specialized vocabularies of biology, medi-
cine and chemistry is light.
Pertinent auxiliary files may be specified by name argu-
ments, indicated below with their default settings. Copies
of all output are accumulated 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 out-
put. If no list is specified, the new list is created from
scratch. Spellout looks up each word in the standard input
SPELL(1) SPELL(1)
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 additions.
British spelling was done by an American.