Checking Spelling with ispell

Checking Spelling with ispell

Back in Chapter 4, we showed you how to spellcheck your files. Unix also offers you ispell, which gives you an interactive way of spellchecking files, similar to the spellchecking capabilities of many word processing programs (Figure 15.1).

Figure 15.1. ispell lets you interactively spellcheck your files.

To Check Spelling with ispell:

1.

ispell gudspeler

At the shell prompt, type ispell followed by the name of the file you want to spellcheck. You'll be greeted with your first (allegedly) misspelled word, the sentence the misspelling appears in, suggested words to replace them is spelled word with, and (probably) a menu at the bottom of the screen, as shown in Figure 15.1. The key menu items are listed in Table 15.1.

Table 15.1. ispell Menu Items

ITEM	DESCRIPTION
	Accept the word this time only.
	Replace with a word that you'll specify (after you type R).
	Accept the word for the rest of the current session.
	Insert the word into your dictionary.
	Insert the word (as all lowercase) into your dictionary.
	Quit ispell, without saving any changes.
	Exit ispell saving all changes.
n	Replace highlighted word with a suggested word by typing the appropriate number

2.

Complete your spellcheck using ispell's menu items.

3.

Press to exit ispell, saving all of your changes.

Tip

• Try one (or more) of these flags with the ispell command:

  -b	creates a backup file.
  -S	sorts guesses by likely correctness.
  -B	reports runtogether words as spelling errors.
  -M	makes sure the menu appears at the bottom of the screen, assuming it doesn't appear automatically.