glenda.party
term% ls -F
term% pwd
$home/manuals/9front/7/dict
term% cat index.txt
DICT(7)                Miscellaneous Information Manual                DICT(7)



NAME
       dict - dictionary browser

SYNOPSIS
       dict [ -k ] [ -d dictname ] [ -c command ] [ pattern ]

DESCRIPTION
       Dict  is  a  dictionary  browser.  If a pattern is given on the command
       line, dict prints all matching entries; otherwise it repeatedly accepts
       and executes commands.  The options are

       -d dictname
              Use  the  given dictionary.  The default is oed, the second edi‐
              tion of the Oxford English Dictionary.  A list of available dic‐
              tionaries is printed by option -d?.

       -c command
              Execute  one  command and quit.  The command syntax is described
              below.

       -k     Print a pronunciation key.

       Patterns are regular expressions  (see  regexp(6)),  with  an  implicit
       leading and trailing Patterns are matched against an index of headwords
       and variants, to form a `match set'.  By default, both patterns and the
       index  are  folded:  upper  case characters are mapped into their lower
       case equivalents, and Latin accented characters are mapped  into  their
       non-accented equivalents.  In interactive mode, there is always a `cur‐
       rent match set' and a `current entry' within the match  set.   Commands
       can  change either or both, as well as print the entries or information
       about them.

       Commands have an address followed by a command letter.  Addresses  have
       the form:

       /re/   Set the match set to all entries matching the regular expression
              re, sorted in dictionary order.  Set the current  entry  to  the
              first of the match set.

       !re!   Like  /re/ but use exact matching, i.e., without case and accent
              folding.

       n      An integer n means change the current entry to the  nth  of  the
              current match set.

       #n     The  integer  n  is an absolute byte offset into the raw dictio‐
              nary.  (See the A command, below.)

       addr+  After setting the match set and current entry according to addr,
              change  the  match set and current entry to be the next entry in
              the dictionary (not necessarily in the match set) after the cur‐
              rent entry.

       addr-  Like addr+ but go to previous dictionary entry.

       The  command  letters come in pairs: a lower case and the corresponding
       upper case letter.  The lower case version prints something  about  the
       current  entry  only, and advances the current entry to the next in the
       match set (wrapping around to the beginning after the last).  The upper
       case version prints something about all of the match set and resets the
       current entry to the beginning of the set.

       p,P    Print the whole entry.

       h,H    Print only the headword(s) of the entry.

       a,A    Print the dictionary byte offset of the entry.

       r,R    Print the whole entry in raw format (without translating special
              characters, etc.).

       If no command letter is given for the first command, H is assumed.  Af‐
       ter an H, the default command is p.  Otherwise, the default command  is
       the previous command.

FILES
       /lib/dict/oed2
       /lib/dict/oed2index
       Other files in /lib.

SEE ALSO
       regexp(6)

SOURCE
       /sys/src/cmd/dict

BUGS
       A  font  with  wide coverage of the Unicode Standard should be used for
       best results.  (Try /lib/font/bit/pelm/unicode.9.font.)
       If the pattern doesn't begin with a few  literal  characters,  matching
       takes a long time.
       The dictionaries are not distributed outside Bell Labs.



                                                                       DICT(7)