#25 Checking the Spelling of Individual Words
High-end programs like StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, and Microsoft Word include built-in spell-checking software, but the more rudimentary command-line question of whether a single word is spelled correctly or not is beyond the ability of any of these applications.
Similarly, most Unixes include a spell-check package that works reasonably well, albeit with a crusty interface. Given an input file or data stream, the packages generate a long list of all possible misspellings. Some spell-check packages include interactive spell-check applications. Again, however, none of them offer a simple way to check the spelling of a single word.
Don't have a spell-check program installed?
For those Unix distributions that don't have a spell package — though, really, all of 'em should nowadays, with disk space so cheap — an excellent option is to install ispell, from http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/geoff/ispell.html
The Code
#!/bin/sh
# checkspelling - Checks the spelling of a word.
spell="ispell -l" # if you have ispell installed
# if not, just define spell=aspell or
# equivalent
if [ $# -lt 1 ] ; then
echo "Usage: $0 word or words" >&2; exit 1
fi
for word
do
if [ -z $(echo $word | $spell) ] ; then
echo "$word: spelled correctly."
else
echo "$word: misspelled."
fi
done
exit 0
Running the Script
To use this script, simply specify one or more words as arguments of the checkspelling command.
The Results
It's now easy to ascertain the correct spelling of "their":
$ checkspelling thier their thier: misspelled. their: spelled correctly.
Hacking the Script
There's quite a bit you can do with a spelling utility and, for that matter, quite a bit that ispell can already accomplish. This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, as you'll see in the next script.