UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Many years ago while I was in college, there was a 'sexist' filter on our 3B2 to change words with sexual content to a more political correct form. eg: 'mailman' to 'postal carrier', 'policeman' to 'police officer' , etc. I believe it was part of the DWB, but I'm not sure. Can anyone point me to a source for the scripts or similiar to make substitutions in texts?

Hmm... I have never heard of anything like this and couldn't turn anything up during a quick google, but it'd be fairly straightforward (if not lengthy) to write your own.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

while (<>) {
  $_=~s/Mailman/Postal Carrier/gi;
  $_=~s/Mailwoman/Postal Carrier/gi;
  print "$_";
}

Then
$ ./filter.pl my_sexist_file

Unfortunately, you'd need to add a ton of rules covering all sexist eventualities! It'd probably run as slow as hell once you've got a few rules in there too.

Cheers
ZB

Yes, you are one the right track. As I recall, there were several files. A script file as a front-end and 'translation files'. One of which was call 'sexist'. The file had two columns. One for the word to be replaced and the other for the translation.

One of the dictionary scripts for VIM probaly could do this. Again, you may have to do the writeup as well. But then you could add

Bad words || Good words
------------------------------
mailman - postal carrier
copper - Law Enforcement Agent


http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=195


Though, not a Unix program, this program is called Newspeak 2.1: Politically Correct Translator
Description: Newspeak automatically edits your writing to make it:
either (a) Old Fashioned & Beautiful.
or (b) fashionable and politically correct.

Please see the following link:
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/...vingLinux.html

It appears that it was the 'Writer's WorkBench' I was thinking of. The GNU version does not include a sexist filter, but I will give it a look. Thanks to all who responded.

I think you may have had it right the first time. I have the original DWB manuals in front of me. Good thing that I didn't post earlier with a guess as to what DWB meant. These books are labelled "UNIX System V Documenter's Workbench". They describe the following programs: mm, troff, sroff, nroff, tbl, pic, and eqn.

I have throughout all of my unix text processing docs. I can't find any mention of a sexist filter. The style/diction/explain programs came out later. They, as supplied, do not address sexist constructs. With a non-standard data file, I suppose that they could.