ISPELL(1)



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]

       Helper programs:

       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 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  ig-
       nored):

              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 de-
       fault 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 valid 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  re-
                     ally  be -s, but for historical reasons that flag was al-
                     ready taken.)

              -o     The input file should be treated as ordinary text.  (This
                     could be used to override DEFTEXFLAG.)

              -g     The  input file is in Debian control file format.  Ispell
                     will ignore everything outside the Description(s).

              -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 valid 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 british to  choose  /usr/lib/ispell/british.{aff|hash}
                     instead of your default ispell dictionary.

              -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 valid.

              -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.)   Un-
       less  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 exten-
       sion ".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  ref-
       erence keys as are found in the \cite command, since they contain arbi-
       trary, 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 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 (if available on your system), bibliography sys-
       tem, 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 or 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-to-
       gether  words will be considered to be valid 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  com-
       pound  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 in-
       stallation the default may  vary  depending  on  which  dictionary  you
       choose.  Warning: the -C option can cause ispell to recognize non-words
       and misspellings.  Use it with caution!

       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  invalid
       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 invalid,  be-
       cause  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.

       It is not possible to use -w with certain characters.   In  particular,
       the  flag-marker character for the language (defined in the affix file,
       but usually "/") can never be made into a word character.

       The -W option may be used to change the length of words that ispell al-
       ways  accepts  as  valid.  Normally, ispell will accept all 1-character
       words as valid, which is equivalent to specifying "-W 1."  (The default
       for  this switch is actually controlled by the MINWORD installation op-
       tion, 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 -k option is used to enhance the behavior of certain  deformatters.
       The name parameter gives the name of a deformatter keyword set (see be-
       low), and the list parameter gives a list of one or more keywords  that
       are  to  be treated specially.  If list begins with a plus (+) sign, it
       is added to the existing keywords; otherwise it replaces  the  existing
       keyword  list.  For example, -ktexskip1 +bibliographystyle adds "bibli-
       ographystyle" to the TeX skip-1 list, while -khtmlignore pre,strong re-
       places  the HTML ignore list with "pre" and "strong".  The lists avail-
       able are:

       texskip1
              TeX/LaTeX commands that take a single argument that  should  not
              be  spell-checked,  such as "bibliographystyle".  The default is
              "end", "vspace", "hspace",  "cite",  "ref",  "parbox",  "label",
              "input",  "nocite",  "include",  "includeonly", "documentstyle",
              "documentclass",  "usepackage",  "selectlanguage",  "pagestyle",
              "pagenumbering",  "hyphenation",  "pageref",  and  "psfig", plus
              "bibliography" in some installations.  These keywords are  case-
              sensitive.

       texskip2
              TeX/LaTeX  commands  that  take two arguments that should not be
              spell-checked, such as  "setlength".   The  default  is  "rule",
              "setcounter",  "addtocounter",  "setlength",  "addtolength", and
              "settowidth".  These keywords are case-sensitive.

       htmlignore
              HTML tags that delimit text that should not be spell-checked un-
              til  the  matching  end  tag is reached.  The default is "code",
              "samp", "kbd", "pre", "listing", and "address".  These  keywords
              are  case-insensitive.  (Note that the content inside HTML tags,
              such as HREF=, is not normally checked.)

       htmlcheck
              Subfields that should be spell-checked even  inside  HTML  tags.
              The  default is "alt", so that the ALT= portion of IMG tags will
              be spell-checked.  These keywords are case-insensitive.

       All of the above keyword lists can  also  be  modified  by  environment
       variables whose names are the same as above, except in uppercase, e.g.,
       TEXSKIP1.  The -k switch overrides (or adds to) the  environment  vari-
       ables,  and  the  environment variables override or add to the built-in
       defaults.

       The -F switch specifies an external deformatter program.  This  program
       should read data from its standard input and write to its standard out-
       put.  The program must produce exactly one character of output for each
       character of input, or ispell will lose synchronization and corrupt the
       output file.  Whitespace characters (especially blanks, tabs, and  new-
       lines)  and  characters  that  should be spell-checked should be passed
       through unchanged.  Characters that should not be spell-checked  should
       be converted into blanks or other non-word characters.  For example, an
       HTML deformatter might turn all HTML tags into blanks, and  also  blank
       out all text delimited by tags such as "code" or "kbd".

       The  -F  switch  is the preferred way to deformat files for ispell, and
       eventually will become the only way.

       If ispell is invoked without any filenames or mode switches, it  enters
       an  interactive mode designed to let the user check the spelling of in-
       dividual words.  The program repeatedly prompts on standard output with
       "word:"  and responds with either "ok" (possibly with commentary), "not
       found", or "how about" followed by a list of suggestions.

       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 op-
       tion), 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 (invalid) 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 invalid; 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 IN-
       CLUDE_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, the
       string character type is not changed; the '~' command must be  used  to
       do this.  A line starting with '~' causes ispell to set internal param-
       eters (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.)
       However, 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.  A line prefixed with '`' will turn on ver-
       bose-correction  mode  (see  below);  this mode can only be disabled by
       turning on terse mode with '%'.

       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 recommended that programmatic inter-
       faces  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

              `      Enter verbose-correction 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.

       In  verbose-correction  mode, ispell includes the original word immedi-
       ately after the indicator character in output lines beginning with '*',
       '+', and '-', which simplifies interaction for some programs.

       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\n5], 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 invalid 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

       A level of 5 causes multiple lines to be output, one for each generated
       word.   If the generated word did not use any affixes, the line is just
       that word.  If one or more affixes were used, the original root and the
       affixes actually used are printed, joined by a plus sign; then the gen-
       erated word is printed:

              BOTH
              BOTH+R BOTHER

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

       Ispell  is aware of the correct capitalizations of words in the dictio-
       nary and in your personal dictionary.  As  well  as  recognizing  words
       that must be capitalized (e.g., George) and words that must be all-cap-
       itals (e.g., NASA), it can also handle words with "unusual" capitaliza-
       tion  (e.g., "ITCorp" or "TeX").  If a word is capitalized incorrectly,
       the list of possibilities will include all acceptable  capitalizations.
       (More  than  one capitalization may be acceptable; for example, my dic-
       tionary 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 ap-
              pear  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 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(5).  The -s (silent) option suppresses the usual status  mes-
       sages 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:  on a multiuser system, this can be a security hole.  To avoid
       possible destruction of important files, don't run the script as  root,
       and  set MUNCHDEBUGDIR to the name of a directory that only you can ac-
       cess.

       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 af-
       fix file (-l switch) to determine the string-character format used  for
       the  input  file; the output always uses the canonical string-character
       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 de-
       scriptions 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 valid 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 be-
       fore 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 be-
       ginning; 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.  The -w switch is identical to the same
       switch in ispell.

   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.

       ISPELL_CHARSET
              Formatter  type  or character encoding to use, if none is chosen
              by a flag option.

       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

       MUNCHDEBUGDIR
              Directory used to hold the output of munchlists' -D option.

       TEXSKIP1
              List of single-argument TeX keywords that ispell should ignore.

       TEXSKIP2
              List of two-argument TeX keywords that ispell should ignore.

       HTMLIGNORE
              List of HTML keywords that  delimit  text  that  should  not  be
              spell-checked.

       HTMLCHECK
              List  of  HTML  fields that should always be spell-checked, even
              inside a tag.

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

       /usr/lib/ispell/default.aff
              Affix-definition file for munchlist

       /usr/share/dict/words
              For the Lookup function.

       $HOME/.ispell_hashfile
              User's private dictionary

       .ispell_hashfile
              Directory-specific private dictionary

SEE ALSO
       egrep(1), look(1), join(1), sort(1), spell(1), sq(1), tib (if available
       on your system), ispell(5), english(5)

BUGS
       On some machines it takes too long for ispell to read in the  hash  ta-
       ble, 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 ma-
       chines 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.

       The -e flag should accept mnemonic arguments instead of numeric ones.

       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 kilobytes.  (The
       larger ratio is for dictionaries that already  have  heavy  affix  use,
       such as the one distributed with ispell).  Munchlist is also very slow;
       munching a normal-sized dictionary (15000 roots, 45000 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  can-
       not be processed with this script in a mere 50 kilobytes of free space,
       and even after specifying switches to reduce the  temporary  space  re-
       quired, 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  re-
       vised 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 3.4.00 8 Feb 2015.

                                     local                           ISPELL(1)

Man(1) output converted with man2html
list of all man pages