buildhash man page on DigitalUNIX

Man page or keyword search:  
man Server   12896 pages
apropos Keyword Search (all sections)
Output format
DigitalUNIX logo
[printable version]

ISPELL(1)							     ISPELL(1)

NAME
       ispell,	buildhash,  munchlist,	findaffix, tryaffix, icombine, ijoin -
       Interactive spelling checking

SYNOPSIS
       ispell [common-flags] [-M|-N] [-Lcontext] [-V] files
       ispell [common-flags] -l
       ispell [common-flags] [-f file] [-s] {-a|-A}
       ispell [-d file] [-w chars] -c
       ispell [-d file] [-w chars] -e[e]
       ispell [-d file] -D
       ispell -v[v]

       common-flags:
	      [-t] [-n] [-b] [-x] [-B] [-C] [-P] [-m] [-S] [-d file] [-p file]
	      [-w chars] [-W n] [-T type]

       buildhash [-s] dict-file affix-file hash-file
       buildhash -s count affix-file

       munchlist [-l aff-file] [-c conv-file] [-T suffix]
		 [-s hash-file] [-D] [-v] [-w chars] [files]

       findaffix [-p|-s] [-f] [-c] [-m min] [-M max] [-e elim]
		 [-t tabchar] [-l low] [files]

       tryaffix [-p|-s] [-c] expanded-file affix[+addition]

       icombine [-T type] [aff-file]

       ijoin [-s|-u] join-options file1 file2

DESCRIPTION
       Ispell  is fashioned after the spell program from ITS (called ispell on
       Twenex systems.)	 The most common usage is "ispell filename".  In  this
       case,  ispell  will display each word which does not appear in the dic‐
       tionary at the top of the screen and allow you to change it.  If	 there
       are  "near misses" in the dictionary (words which differ by only a sin‐
       gle letter, a missing or extra letter, a pair of transposed letters, or
       a  missing  space or hyphen), then they are also displayed on following
       lines.  As well as "near misses", ispell may display other  guesses  at
       ways  to	 make  the word from a known root, with each guess preceded by
       question marks.	Finally, the line containing the word and the previous
       line  are  printed  at  the bottom of the screen.  If your terminal can
       display in reverse video, the word itself is highlighted.  You have the
       option  of  replacing  the word completely, or choosing one of the sug‐
       gested words.  Commands are  single  characters	as  follows  (case  is
       ignored):

	      R	     Replace the misspelled word completely.

	      Space  Accept the word this time only.

	      A	     Accept the word for the rest of this ispell session.

	      I	     Accept  the  word,	 capitalized as it is in the file, and
		     update private dictionary.

	      U	     Accept the word, and add an uncapitalized (actually,  all
		     lower-case) version to the private dictionary.

	      0-n    Replace with one of the suggested words.

	      L	     Look  up  words  in  system dictionary (controlled by the
		     WORDS compilation option).

	      X	     Write the rest of this file, ignoring  misspellings,  and
		     start next file.

	      Q	     Exit immediately and leave the file unchanged.

	      !	     Shell escape.

	      ^L     Redraw screen.

	      ^Z     Suspend ispell.

	      ?	     Give help screen.

       If  the	-M  switch is specified, a one-line mini-menu at the bottom of
       the screen will summarize these options.	 Conversely, the -N switch may
       be  used	 to  suppress  the  mini-menu.	 (The minimenu is displayed by
       default if ispell was compiled with the MINIMENU option, but these  two
       switches will always override the default).

       If  the -L flag is given, the specified number is used as the number of
       lines of context to be shown at the bottom of the screen	 (The  default
       is  to  calculate  the amount of context as a certain percentage of the
       screen size).  The amount of context is	subject	 to  a	system-imposed
       limit.

       If  the	-V  flag  is  given, characters that are not in the 7-bit ANSI
       printable character set will always be displayed in the style  of  "cat
       -v",  even if ispell thinks that these characters are legal ISO Latin-1
       on your system.	This is useful	when  working  with  older  terminals.
       Without	this  switch,  ispell will display 8-bit characters "as is" if
       they have been defined as string characters for the chosen file type.

       "Normal" mode, as well as the -l, -a, and -A options (see  below)  also
       accepts the following "common" flags on the command line:

	      -t     The input file is in TeX or LaTeX format.

	      -n     The input file is in nroff/troff format.

	      -b     Create  a	backup file by appending ".bak" to the name of
		     the input file.

	      -x     Don't create a backup file.

	      -B     Report run-together words with missing blanks as spelling
		     errors.

	      -C     Consider run-together words as legal compounds.

	      -P     Don't generate extra root/affix combinations.

	      -m     Make  possible root/affix combinations that aren't in the
		     dictionary.

	      -S     Sort the list of guesses by probable correctness.

	      -d file
		     Specify an alternate dictionary file.  For	 example,  use
		     -d	 deutsch  to  choose  a	 German dictionary in a German
		     installation.

	      -p file
		     Specify an alternate personal dictionary.

	      -w chars
		     Specify additional characters that can be part of a word.

	      -W n   Specify length of words that are always legal.

	      -T type
		     Assume a given formatter type for all files.

       The -n and -t options select whether ispell runs in nroff/troff (-n) or
       TeX/LaTeX  (-t)	input  mode.   (The  default is controlled by the DEF‐
       TEXFLAG installation option.)  TeX/LaTeX	 mode  is  also	 automatically
       selected	 if  an input file has the extension ".tex", unless overridden
       by the -n switch.  In TeX/LaTeX mode, whenever  a  backslash  ("\")  is
       found,  ispell will skip to the next whitespace or TeX/LaTeX delimiter.
       Certain commands contain arguments which should not be checked, such as
       labels and reference keys as are found in the \cite command, since they
       contain arbitrary, non-word arguments.  Spell  checking	is  also  sup‐
       pressed when in math mode.  Thus, for example, given

	      \chapter {This is a Ckapter} \cite{SCH86}

       ispell  will find "Ckapter" but not "SCH".  The -t option does not rec‐
       ognize the TeX comment character	 "%",  so  comments  are  also	spell-
       checked.	  It  also  assumes correct LaTeX syntax.  Arguments to infre‐
       quently used commands and some optional arguments are sometimes checked
       unnecessarily.  The bibliography will not be checked if ispell was com‐
       piled with IGNOREBIB defined.   Otherwise,  the	bibliography  will  be
       checked but the reference key will not.

       References  for the tib(1) bibliography system, that is, text between a
       ``[.'' or ``<.'' and  ``.]''  or	 ``.>''	 will  always  be  ignored  in
       TeX/LaTeX mode.

       The  -b	and  -x	 options control whether ispell leaves a backup (.bak)
       file for each input file.  The .bak  file  contains  the	 pre-corrected
       text.  If there are file opening / writing errors, the .bak file may be
       left for recovery purposes even with the -x option.   The  default  for
       this option is controlled by the DEFNOBACKUPFLAG installation option.

       The  -B	and  -C options control how ispell handles run-together words,
       such as "notthe" for "not the".	If -B is specified, such words will be
       considered  as errors, and ispell will list variations with an inserted
       blank or hyphen as possible replacements.  If  -C  is  specified,  run-
       together	 words	will  be  considered to be legal compounds, so long as
       both components are in the dictionary, and each component is  at	 least
       as  long	 as  a	language-dependent minimum (3 characters, by default).
       This is useful for languages such as German and Norwegian,  where  many
       compound	 words	are  formed  by	 concatenation.	  (Note that compounds
       formed from three or more root words will still be considered  errors).
       The  default  for this option is language-dependent; in a multi-lingual
       installation the default may vary depending  on	which  dictionary  you
       choose.

       The  -P and -m options control when ispell automatically generates sug‐
       gested root/affix combinations for possible addition to	your  personal
       dictionary.   (These are the entries in the "guess" list which are pre‐
       ceded by question marks.)  If -P is specified, such  guesses  are  dis‐
       played  only if ispell cannot generate any possibilities that match the
       current dictionary.  If -m is specified, such guesses are  always  dis‐
       played.	 This can be useful if the dictionary has a limited word list,
       or a word list with few suffixes.  However, you should be careful  when
       using  this  option,  as	 it  can generate guesses that produce illegal
       words.  The default for this option is  controlled  by  the  dictionary
       file used.

       The  -S	option suppresses ispell's normal behavior of sorting the list
       of possible replacement words.  Some people may prefer this,  since  it
       somewhat	 enhances  the	probability that the correct word will be low-
       numbered.

       The -d option is used to specify an alternate hashed  dictionary	 file,
       other  than  the	 default.  If the filename does not contain a "/", the
       library directory for the default dictionary file is prefixed; thus, to
       use  a  dictionary in the local directory "-d ./xxx.hash" must be used.
       This is useful to allow dictionaries for alternate  languages.	Unlike
       previous	 versions  of  ispell,	a  dictionary of /dev/null is illegal,
       because the dictionary contains the affix table.	 If you need an effec‐
       tively  empty  dictionary,  create  a  one-entry	 list with an unlikely
       string (e.g., "qqqqq").

       The -p option is used to specify an alternate personal dictionary file.
       If the file name does not begin with "/", $HOME is prefixed.  Also, the
       shell variable WORDLIST may be set, which renames the personal  dictio‐
       nary  in the same manner.  The command line overrides any WORDLIST set‐
       ting.  If neither the -p switch nor the WORDLIST	 environment  variable
       is given, ispell will search for a personal dictionary in both the cur‐
       rent directory and $HOME, creating one in $HOME if none is found.   The
       preferred  name is constructed by appending ".ispell_" to the base name
       of the hash file.  For example, if you use the English dictionary, your
       personal	 dictionary would be named ".ispell_english".  However, if the
       file ".ispell_words" exists, it will be used as the personal dictionary
       regardless  of the language hash file chosen.  This feature is included
       primarily for backwards compatibility.

       If the -p option is not specified, ispell will look for	personal  dic‐
       tionaries  in  both  the	 current directory and the home directory.  If
       dictionaries exist in both places, they will be merged.	If  any	 words
       are  added to the personal dictionary, they will be written to the cur‐
       rent directory if a dictionary already existed in that place; otherwise
       they will be written to the dictionary in the home directory.

       The  -w option may be used to specify characters other than alphabetics
       which may also appear in words.	For instance, -w "&" will allow "AT&T"
       to  be  picked up.  Underscores are useful in many technical documents.
       There is an admittedly crude provision in this option for 8-bit	inter‐
       national	 characters.   Non-printing characters may be specified in the
       usual way by inserting a backslash  followed  by	 the  octal  character
       code;  e.g.,  "\014" for a form feed.  Alternatively, if "n" appears in
       the character string, the (up to) three characters following are a DEC‐
       IMAL  code  0  - 255, for the character.	 For example, to include bells
       and form feeds in your words (an admittedly  silly  thing  to  do,  but
       aren't most pedagogical examples):

	      n007n012

       Numeric	digits	other  than the three following "n" are simply numeric
       characters.  Use of "n" does not conflict with anything because	actual
       alphabetics have no meaning - alphabetics are already accepted.	Ispell
       will typically be used with input from a file, meaning that  preserving
       parity for possible 8 bit characters from the input text is OK.	If you
       specify the -l option, and actually type text from the  terminal,  this
       may create problems if your stty settings preserve parity.

       The  -W	option	may  be used to change the length of words that ispell
       always accepts as legal.	 Normally, ispell will accept all  1-character
       words as legal, which is equivalent to specifying "-W 1."  (The default
       for this switch is actually  controlled	by  the	 MINWORD  installation
       option, so it may vary at your installation.)  If you want all words to
       be checked against the dictionary, regardless of length, you might want
       to specify "-W 0."  On the other hand, if your document specifies a lot
       of three-letter acronyms, you would specify "-W 3" to accept all	 words
       of  three  letters  or less.  Regardless of the setting of this option,
       ispell will only generate words that are in the dictionary as suggested
       replacements  for words; this prevents the list from becoming too long.
       Obviously, this option can be very dangerous, since short  misspellings
       may  be missed.	If you use this option a lot, you should probably make
       a last pass without it before you publish  your	document,  to  protect
       yourself against errors.

       The  -T	option	is used to specify a default formatter type for use in
       generating string characters.  This switch overrides the	 default  type
       determined  from the file name.	The type argument may be either one of
       the unique names defined in the language affix file (e.g., nroff) or  a
       file  suffix  including	the dot (e.g., .tex).  If no -T option appears
       and no type can be determined from the file name,  the  default	string
       character type declared in the language affix file will be used.

       The  -l	or  "list"  option to ispell is used to produce a list of mis‐
       spelled words from the standard input.

       The -a option is intended to be used  from  other  programs  through  a
       pipe.   In  this	 mode, ispell prints a one-line version identification
       message, and then begins reading lines of input.	 For each input	 line,
       a  single  line is written to the standard output for each word checked
       for spelling on the line.  If the word was found in  the	 main  dictio‐
       nary,  or  your personal dictionary, then the line contains only a '*'.
       If the word was found through affix removal, then the line  contains  a
       '+',  a	space,	and the root word.  If the word was found through com‐
       pound formation (concatenation of  two  words,  controlled  by  the  -C
       option), then the line contains only a '-'.

       If  the	word is not in the dictionary, but there are near misses, then
       the line contains an '&', a space, the misspelled word,	a  space,  the
       number  of  near misses, the number of characters between the beginning
       of the line and the beginning of the misspelled word, a colon,  another
       space,  and  a  list of the near misses separated by commas and spaces.
       Following the near misses (and identified only by  the  count  of  near
       misses),	 if  the word could be formed by adding (illegal) affixes to a
       known root, is a list of suggested derivations, again separated by com‐
       mas and spaces.	If there are no near misses at all, the line format is
       the same, except that the '&' is replaced by  '?'  (and	the  near-miss
       count  is  always  zero).  The suggested derivations following the near
       misses are in the form:

	      [prefix+] root [-prefix] [-suffix] [+suffix]

       (e.g., "re+fry-y+ies" to get "refries") where each optional pfx and sfx
       is  a string.  Also, each near miss or guess is capitalized the same as
       the input word unless such capitalization is  illegal;  in  the	latter
       case  each  near miss is capitalized correctly according to the dictio‐
       nary.

       Finally, if the word does not appear in the dictionary, and  there  are
       no  near	 misses, then the line contains a '#', a space, the misspelled
       word, a space, and the character offset from the beginning of the line.
       Each  sentence  of  text	 input	is terminated with an additional blank
       line, indicating that ispell has completed processing the input line.

       These output lines can be summarized as follows:

	      OK:    *

	      Root:  + <root>

	      Compound:
		     -

	      Miss:  &	<original>  <count>  <offset>:	<miss>,	 <miss>,  ...,
		     <guess>, ...

	      Guess: ? <original> 0 <offset>: <guess>, <guess>, ...

	      None:  # <original> <offset>

       For  example,  a	 dummy dictionary containing the words "fray", "Frey",
       "fry", and "refried" might produce the following response to  the  com‐
       mand "echo 'frqy refries | ispell -a -m -d ./test.hash":
	      (#) International Ispell Version 3.0.05 (beta), 08/10/91
	      & frqy 3 0: fray, Frey, fry
	      & refries 1 5: refried, re+fry-y+ies

       This  mode is also suitable for interactive use when you want to figure
       out the spelling of a single word.

       The -A option works just like -a, except that if a line begins with the
       string "&Include_File&", the rest of the line is taken as the name of a
       file to read for further words.	Input returns  to  the	original  file
       when the include file is exhausted.  Inclusion may be nested up to five
       deep.  The key string may be  changed  with  the	 environment  variable
       INCLUDE_STRING (the ampersands, if any, must be included).

       When in the -a mode, ispell will also accept lines of single words pre‐
       fixed with any of '*', '&', '@', '+', '-', '~', '#', '!', '%', or  '^'.
       A  line	starting  with	'*'  tells  ispell to insert the word into the
       user's dictionary (similar to the I command).  A line starting with '&'
       tells  ispell  to  insert an all-lowercase version of the word into the
       user's dictionary (similar to the U command).  A line starting with '@'
       causes  ispell to accept this word in the future (similar to the A com‐
       mand).  A line starting with '+', followed immediately by tex or	 nroff
       will  cause  ispell  to parse future input according the syntax of that
       formatter.  A line consisting solely of a  '+'  will  place  ispell  in
       TeX/LaTeX  mode	(similar  to  the -t option) and '-' returns ispell to
       nroff/troff mode (but these commands are	 obsolete).   However,	string
       character type is not changed; the '~' command must be used to do this.
       A line starting with '~' causes ispell to set internal  parameters  (in
       particular,  the	 default  string character type) based on the filename
       given in the rest of the line.  (A file suffix is sufficient,  but  the
       period  must  be	 included.  Instead of a file name or suffix, a unique
       name, as listed in the language affix file, may	be  specified.)	  How‐
       ever,  the  formatter  parsing is not changed;  the '+' command must be
       used to change the formatter.  A line prefixed with '#' will cause  the
       personal dictionary to be saved.	 A line prefixed with '!' will turn on
       terse mode (see below), and a line prefixed with '%' will return ispell
       to  normal (non-terse) mode.  Any input following the prefix characters
       '+', '-', '#', '!', or '%' is ignored, as is any	 input	following  the
       filename	 on  a	'~'  line.  To allow spell-checking of lines beginning
       with these characters, a line starting  with  '^'  has  that  character
       removed	before	it is passed to the spell-checking code.  It is recom‐
       mended that programmatic interfaces prefix  every  data	line  with  an
       uparrow to protect themselves against future changes in ispell.

       To summarize these:

	      *	     Add to personal dictionary

	      @	     Accept word, but leave out of dictionary

	      #	     Save current personal dictionary

	      ~	     Set parameters based on filename

	      +	     Enter TeX mode

	      -	     Exit TeX mode

	      !	     Enter terse mode

	      %	     Exit terse mode

	      ^	     Spell-check rest of line

       In  terse mode, ispell will not print lines beginning with '*', '+', or
       '-', all of which indicate correct words.  This significantly  improves
       running speed when the driving program is going to ignore correct words
       anyway.

       The -s option is only valid in conjunction with the -a or  -A  options,
       and only on BSD-derived systems.	 If specified, ispell will stop itself
       with a SIGTSTP signal after each line of input.	It will not read  more
       input until it receives a SIGCONT signal.  This may be useful for hand‐
       shaking with certain text editors.

       The -f option is only valid in conjunction with the -a or  -A  options.
       If  -f  is  specified, ispell will write its results to the given file,
       rather than to standard output.

       The -v option causes ispell to print its current version identification
       on the standard output and exit.	 If the switch is doubled, ispell will
       also print the options that it was compiled with.

       The -c, -e[1-4], and -D options of ispell, are primarily	 intended  for
       use  by	the  munchlist	shell  script.	The -c switch causes a list of
       words to be read from the standard input.  For each  word,  a  list  of
       possible root words and affixes will be written to the standard output.
       Some of the root words will be illegal and must be  filtered  from  the
       output  by other means; the munchlist script does this.	As an example,
       the command:

	      echo BOTHER | ispell -c

       produces:

	      BOTHER BOTHE/R BOTH/R

       The -e switch is the reverse of -c; it expands affix flags to produce a
       list of words.  For example, the command:

	      echo BOTH/R | ispell -e

       produces:

	      BOTH BOTHER

       An  optional expansion level can also be specified.  A level of 1 (-e1)
       is the same as -e alone.	 A level of 2 causes the  original  root/affix
       combination to be prepended to the line:

	      BOTH/R BOTH BOTHER

       A level of 3 causes multiple lines to be output, one for each generated
       word, with the original root/affix combination followed by the word  it
       creates:

	      BOTH/R BOTH
	      BOTH/R BOTHER

       A  level	 of 4 causes a floating-point number to be appended to each of
       the level-3 lines, giving the ratio between the length of the root  and
       the total length of all generated words including the root:

	      BOTH/R BOTH 2.500000
	      BOTH/R BOTHER 2.500000

       Finally,	 the  -D flag causes the affix tables from the dictionary file
       to be dumped to standard output.

       Unless your system administrator has suppressed	the  feature  to  save
       space,  ispell  is aware of the correct capitalizations of words in the
       dictionary and in your personal dictionary.   As	 well  as  recognizing
       words  that  must  be capitalized (e.g., George) and words that must be
       all-capitals (e.g., NASA), it can also handle words with "unusual" cap‐
       italization (e.g., "ITCorp" or "TeX").  If a word is capitalized incor‐
       rectly, the list of possibilities will include all acceptable  capital‐
       izations.   (More  than one capitalization may be acceptable; for exam‐
       ple, my dictionary lists both "ITCorp" and "ITcorp".)

       Normally, this feature will not cause you surprises, but there  is  one
       circumstance  you need to be aware of.  If you use "I" to add a word to
       your dictionary that is at the beginning of a sentence (e.g., the first
       word  of	 this  paragraph if "normally" were not in the dictionary), it
       will be marked as "capitalization required".   A	 subsequent  usage  of
       this word without capitalization (e.g., the quoted word in the previous
       sentence) will be considered a misspelling by ispell, and it will  sug‐
       gest  the  capitalized  version.	  You  must  then  compare  the actual
       spellings by eye, and then type "I" to add the uncapitalized variant to
       your  personal  dictionary.  You can avoid this problem by using "U" to
       add the original word, rather than "I".

       The rules for capitalization are as follows:

       (1)    Any word may appear in all capitals, as in headings.

       (2)    Any word that is in the dictionary  in  all-lowercase  form  may
	      appear  either  in lowercase or capitalized (as at the beginning
	      of a sentence).

       (3)    Any word that has "funny" capitalization (i.e., it contains both
	      cases  and  there	 is  an uppercase character besides the first)
	      must appear exactly as in the dictionary, except as permitted by
	      rule  (1).   If the word is acceptable in all-lowercase, it must
	      appear thus in a dictionary entry.

   buildhash
       The buildhash program builds hashed dictionary files for later  use  by
       ispell.	 The  raw  word list (with affix flags) is given in dict-file,
       and the the affix flags are defined by affix-file.  The	hashed	output
       is  written  to	hash-file.   The  formats  of  the two input files are
       described in ispell(4).	The -s (silent) option	suppresses  the	 usual
       status messages that are written to the standard error device.

   munchlist
       The  munchlist  shell  script  is used to reduce the size of dictionary
       files, primarily personal dictionary files.  It is also capable of com‐
       bining  dictionaries  from  various  sources.  The given files are read
       (standard input if no arguments are given), reduced to a minimal set of
       roots  and  affixes that will match the same list of words, and written
       to standard output.

       Input for munchlist contains of raw words (e.g from your personal  dic‐
       tionary	files)	or  root and affix combinations (probably generated in
       earlier munchlist runs).	 Each word or root/affix combination  must  be
       on a separate line.

       The  -D	(debug)	 option	 leaves	 temporary files around under standard
       names instead of deleting them, so that the  script  can	 be  debugged.
       Warning:	 this  option  can eat up an enormous amount of temporary file
       space.

       The -v (verbose) option causes progress	messages  to  be  reported  to
       stderr so you won't get nervous that munchlist has hung.

       If  the -s (strip) option is specified, words that are in the specified
       hash-file are removed from the word list.  This can be useful with per‐
       sonal dictionaries.

       The -l option can be used to specify an alternate affix-file for munch‐
       ing dictionaries in languages other than English.

       The -c option can be used to convert dictionaries that were built  with
       an  older  affix	 file,	without risk of accidentally introducing unin‐
       tended affix combinations into the dictionary.

       The -T option allows  dictionaries  to  be  converted  to  a  canonical
       string-character	 format.   The	suffix	specified  is looked up in the
       affix file (-l switch) to determine the	string-character  format  used
       for the input file; the output always uses the canonical string-charac‐
       ter format.  For example, a dictionary collected from TeX source	 files
       might be converted to canonical format by specifying -T tex.

       The -w option is passed on to ispell.

   findaffix
       The  findaffix  shell  script  is  an  aid  to  writers of new language
       descriptions in choosing affixes.  The given dictionary files (standard
       input if none are given) are examined for possible prefixes (-p switch)
       or suffixes (-s switch, the default).  Each commonly-occurring affix is
       presented  along	 with a count of the number of times it appears and an
       estimate of the number of bytes that would be  saved  in	 a  dictionary
       hash  file  if  it were added to the language table.  Only affixes that
       generate legal roots (found in the original input) are listed.

       If the "-c" option is not given, the output lines are in the  following
       format:

	      strip/add/count/bytes

       where  strip  is	 the  string  that should be stripped from a root word
       before adding the affix, add is the affix to be added, count is a count
       of  the	number	of  times that this strip/add combination appears, and
       bytes is an estimate of the number of bytes that might be saved in  the
       raw  dictionary	file  if  this combination is added to the affix file.
       The field separator in the output will be the tab  character  specified
       by the -t switch;  the default is a slash ("/").

       If  the -c ("clean output") option is given, the appearance of the out‐
       put is made visually cleaner (but harder to post-process)  by  changing
       it to:

	      -strip+add<tab>count<tab>bytes

       where  strip, add, count, and bytes are as before, and <tab> represents
       the ASCII tab character.

       The method used to generate possible affixes will also generate	longer
       affixes	which  have  common headers or trailers.  For example, the two
       words "moth" and "mother" will generate not only the obvious  substitu‐
       tion  "+er"  but also "-h+her" and "-th+ther" (and possibly even longer
       ones, depending on the value of min).  To prevent cluttering the output
       with  such affixes, any affix pair that shares a common header (or, for
       prefixes, trailer) string longer than elim characters (default 1)  will
       be suppressed.  You may want to set "elim" to a value greater than 1 if
       your language has string characters; usually the need for this  parame‐
       ter  will  become obvious when you examine the output of your findaffix
       run.

       Normally, the affixes are sorted according to  the  estimate  of	 bytes
       saved.	The -f switch may be used to cause the affixes to be sorted by
       frequency of appearance.

       To save output file space, affixes which occur fewer than 10 times  are
       eliminated;  this  limit	 may  be  changed  with the -l switch.	The -M
       switch specifies a maximum affix length (default	 8).   Affixes	longer
       than  this  will	 not be reported.  (This saves on temporary disk space
       and makes the script run faster.)

       Affixes which generate stems shorter than 3 characters are  suppressed.
       (A stem is the word after the strip string has been removed, and before
       the add string has been added.)	This reduces both the running time and
       the  size  of  the  output file.	 This limit may be changed with the -m
       switch.	The minimum stem length should only be set to 1 if you have  a
       lot of free time and disk space (in the range of many days and hundreds
       of megabytes).

       The findaffix script requires a non-blank field-separator character for
       internal	 use.	Normally,  this character is a slash ("/"), but if the
       slash appears as a character in the input word list, a different	 char‐
       acter can be specified with the -t switch.

       Ispell  dictionaries  should be expanded before being fed to findaffix;
       in addition, characters that are not in the English alphabet  (if  any)
       should be translated to lowercase.

   tryaffix
       The  tryaffix  shell  script is used to estimate the effectiveness of a
       proposed prefix (-p switch) or suffix (-s switch, the default)  with  a
       given  expanded-file.   Only one affix can be tried with each execution
       of tryaffix, although multiple arguments can be used to describe	 vary‐
       ing  forms of the same affix flag (e.g., the D flag for English can add
       either D or ED depending on whether a trailing E is  already  present).
       Each  word  in  the  expanded dictionary that ends (or begins) with the
       chosen suffix (or prefix) has that suffix (prefix) removed; the dictio‐
       nary  is	 then  searched	 for  root words that match the stripped word.
       Normally, all matching roots are written to standard output, but if the
       -c  (count) flag is given, only a statistical summary of the results is
       written.	 The statistics given are a count of words  the	 affix	poten‐
       tially  applies	to  and	 an estimate of the number of dictionary bytes
       that a flag using the affix would save.	The estimate will be  high  if
       the  flag  generates  words that are currently generated by other affix
       flags (e.g., in English, bathers can be generated by either  bath/X  or
       bather/S).

       The dictionary file, expanded-file, must already be expanded (using the
       -e switch of ispell) and sorted, and things will usually work  best  if
       uppercase has been folded to lower with 'tr'.

       The  affix arguments are things to be stripped from the dictionary file
       to produce trial roots: for English, con (prefix) and ing (suffix)  are
       examples.   The	addition  parts of the argument are letters that would
       have been stripped off the root before adding the affix.	 For  example,
       in  English  the	 affix	ing normally strips e for words ending in that
       letter (e.g., like becomes liking) so we might run:

	      tryaffix ing ing+e

       to cover both cases.

       All of the shell scripts contain documentation  as  commentary  at  the
       beginning;  sometimes  these comments contain useful information beyond
       the scope of this manual page.

       It is possible to install ispell in such a way as to only support ASCII
       range text if desired.

   icombine
       The  icombine  program  is  a helper for munchlist.  It reads a list of
       words in dictionary format (roots plus flags) from the standard	input,
       and  produces  a	 reduced list on standard output which combines common
       roots found on adjacent entries.	 Identical roots which have  differing
       flags  will  have  their flags combined, and roots which have differing
       capitalizations will be combined in a way which only  preserves	impor‐
       tant  capitalization  information.   The	 optional aff-file specifies a
       language file which defines the character sets used and the meanings of
       the  various flags.  The -T switch can be used to select among alterna‐
       tive string character types by giving a dummy suffix that can be	 found
       in an altstringtype statement.

   ijoin
       The  ijoin program is a re-implementation of join(1) which handles long
       lines and 8-bit characters correctly.  The -s switch specifies that the
       sort(1)	program used to prepare the input to ijoin uses signed compar‐
       isons on 8-bit characters; the -u switch specifies  that	 sort(1)  uses
       unsigned	 comparisons.	All other options and behaviors of join(1) are
       duplicated as exactly as possible based on the manual page, except that
       ijoin  will  not	 handle newline as a field separator.  See the join(1)
       manual page for more information.

ENVIRONMENT
       DICTIONARY
	      Default dictionary to use, if no -d flag is given.

       WORDLIST
	      Personal dictionary file name

       INCLUDE_STRING
	      Code for file inclusion under the -A option

       TMPDIR Directory used for some of munchlist's temporary files

FILES
       /usr/local/lib/english.hash
	      Hashed dictionary (may be found in some other  local  directory,
	      depending on the system).

       /usr/local/lib/english.aff
	      Affix-definition file for munchlist

       /usr/dict/web2 or /usr/dict/words
	      For  the	Lookup	function  (depending  on the WORDS compilation
	      option).

       $HOME/.ispell_hashfile
	      User's private dictionary

       .ispell_hashfile
	      Directory-specific private dictionary

SEE ALSO
       spell(1),  egrep(1),  look(1),  join(1),	 sort(1),   sq(1L),   tib(1L),
       ispell(4L), english(4L)

BUGS
       It  takes several to many seconds for ispell to read in the hash table,
       depending on size.

       When all options are enabled, ispell may take several seconds to gener‐
       ate  all	 the  guesses  at corrections for a misspelled word; on slower
       machines this time is long enough to be annoying.

       The hash table is stored as a quarter-megabyte (or larger) array, so  a
       PDP-11 or 286 version does not seem likely.

       Ispell should understand more troff syntax, and deal more intelligently
       with contractions.

       Although small personal dictionaries are sorted before they are written
       out, the order of capitalizations of the same word is somewhat random.

       When  the  -x  flag  is specified, ispell will unlink any existing .bak
       file.

       There are too many flags, and many of them have non-mnemonic names.

       Munchlist does not deal very gracefully with dictionaries which contain
       "non-word"  characters.	 Such  characters ought to be deleted from the
       dictionary with a warning message.

       Findaffix and munchlist require tremendous amounts  of  temporary  file
       space  for  large dictionaries.	They do respect the TMPDIR environment
       variable, so this space can be redirected.  However, a lot of the  tem‐
       porary space needed is for sorting, so TMPDIR is only a partial help on
       systems with an uncooperative sort(1).  ("Cooperative"  is  defined  as
       accepting  the  undocumented  -T switch).  At its peak usage, munchlist
       takes 10 to 40 times the original dictionary's size in Kb.  (The larger
       ratio  is  for  dictionaries that already have heavy affix use, such as
       the one distributed with ispell).  Munchlist is also very slow;	munch‐
       ing  a  normal-sized  dictionary	 (15K roots, 45K expanded words) takes
       around an hour on a small workstation.  (Most of this time is spent  in
       sort(1), and munchlist can run much faster on machines that have a more
       modern sort that makes better use  of  the  memory  available  to  it.)
       Findaffix is even worse; the smallest English dictionary cannot be pro‐
       cessed with this script in a mere 50Kb of free space,  and  even	 after
       specifying  switches to reduce the temporary space required, the script
       will run for over 24 hours on a small workstation.

AUTHOR
       Pace Willisson (pace@mit-vax), 1983, based on the PDP-10 assembly  ver‐
       sion.   That  version  was  written  by	R. E. Gorin in 1971, and later
       revised by W. E. Matson (1974) and W. B. Ackerman (1978).

       Collected, revised, and enhanced for the Usenet by Walt Buehring, 1987.

       Table-driven multi-lingual version by Geoff Kuenning, 1987-88.

       Large dictionaries provided by Bob Devine (vianet!devine).

       A complete list of contributors is too large to list here, but is  dis‐
       tributed with the ispell sources in the file "Contributors".

VERSION
       The  version  of	 ispell described by this manual page is International
       Ispell Version 3.1.00, 10/08/93.

				     local			     ISPELL(1)
[top]

List of man pages available for DigitalUNIX

Copyright (c) for man pages and the logo by the respective OS vendor.

For those who want to learn more, the polarhome community provides shell access and support.

[legal] [privacy] [GNU] [policy] [cookies] [netiquette] [sponsors] [FAQ]
Tweet
Polarhome, production since 1999.
Member of Polarhome portal.
Based on Fawad Halim's script.
....................................................................
Vote for polarhome
Free Shell Accounts :: the biggest list on the net