term% cat index.txt SPELL(1) General Commands Manual SPELL(1)
NAME
spell - find spelling errors
SYNOPSIS
spell [ option ] ... [ file ] ...
DESCRIPTION
Spell looks up words from the named files (standard input default) in a
public spelling list and in a private list. Words that occur in nei‐
ther and are not plausibly derivable from words in the public list are
placed on the standard output.
Spell ignores most troff, tbl, pic, and eqn(1) constructions. It un‐
derstands these options:
-b check British spelling
-v print all words not literally in the spelling list, with deriva‐
tions
-x print, marked with `=', every stem tried in both stop list and
spelling list
The private list, by default $HOME/lib/spelldict, is arranged one word
per line.
Pertinent auxiliary files may be specified by environment variables,
indicated below with their default settings. Copies of all output are
accumulated in the history file, if it is writable. The stop list fil‐
ters out misspellings (e.g. thier=thy-y+ier) that would otherwise pass.
FILES
D_SPELL=/usr/dict/hlist[ab]: hashed public lists, American & British
S_SPELL=/usr/dict/hstop: hashed stop list
H_SPELL=/usr/dict/spellhist: history file
A_SPELL=$HOME/lib/spelldict: private list
P_SPELL=/usr/lib/spell: the main routine
deroff(1), sort(1), tee(1), comm(1)
SEE ALSO
dict(7)
BUGS
A malicious opponent can defeat spell's heuristics for word derivation,
but this rarely happens in practice.
The spelling list's coverage is uneven; in particular biology,
medicine, and chemistry are covered very lightly. New installations
will probably wish to monitor the output for several months to gather
local additions.
British spelling was done by an American.
SPELL(1)