ISPELL(1) General Commands Manual 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] [-H] [-o] [-b] [-x] [-B] [-C] [-P] [-m] [-S] [-d file] [-p file] [-w chars] [-W n] [-T type] [-kname list] [-F program]
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] [-w chars] [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 dictionary 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 single letter, a missing or extra letter, a pair of transposed let-
ters, 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 suggested 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 and interactive mode (see below) also accepts the following "common" flags on the com-
mand line:
-t The input file is in TeX or LaTeX format.
-n The input file is in nroff/troff format.
-H The input file is in SGML/HTML format. (This should really be -s, but for historical reasons that flag was already taken.)
-o The input file should be treated as ordinary text. (This could be used to override DEFTEXFLAG.)
-b Create a backup file by appending ".bak" to the name of the input file.
-x Delete the backup file after spell-checking is finished.
-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 -H, -n, -t, and -o options select whether ispell runs in HTML (-H), nroff/troff (-n), TeX/LaTeX (-t), or ordinary text (-o) input mode.
mode. (The default mode is controlled by the DEFTEXFLAG installation option, but is normally nroff/troff mode for historical reasons.)
Unless overridden by one of the mode-selection switches, TeX/LaTeX mode is automatically selected if an input file has the extension
".tex", and HTML mode is automatically selected if an input file has the extension ".html" or ".htm".
In HTML mode, HTML tags delimited by <> signs are skipped, except that the "ALT=" construct is recognized if it appears with no spaces
around the equals sign, and the text inside is spell-checked.
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 suppressed 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 recognize the TeX comment character "%", so comments are also spell-
checked. It also assumes correct LaTeX syntax. Arguments to infrequently used commands and some optional arguments are sometimes checked
unnecessarily. The bibliography will not be checked if ispell was compiled with IGNOREBIB defined. Otherwise, the bibliography will be
checked but the reference key will not.
References for the .IRtib(not available), 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 dic-
tionary you choose.
The -P and -m options control when ispell automatically generates suggested root/affix combinations for possible addition to your personal
dictionary. (These are the entries in the "guess" list which are preceded 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
displayed. 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 effectively 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 dictionary in the same manner. The command line overrides any
WORDLIST setting. If neither the -p switch nor the WORDLIST environment variable is given, ispell will search for a personal dictionary in
both the current 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 dictionaries 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
current 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 international characters. Non-printing characters may be specified in the usual way by inserting a backslash followed by the octal
character code; e.g., "