ISPELL(4) UNIX System V (local) ISPELL(4)
NAME
ispell - format of ispell dictionaries and affix files
DESCRIPTION
Ispell(1) requires two files to define the language that it
is spell-checking. The first file is a dictionary
containing words for the language, and the second is an
"affix" file that defines the meaning of special flags in
the dictionary. The two files are combined by buildhash
(see ispell(1)) and written to a hash file which is not
described here.
A raw ispell dictionary (either the main dictionary or your
own personal dictionary) contains a list of words, one per
line. Each word may optionally be followed by a slash ("/")
and one or more flags, which modify the root word as
explained below. Depending on the options with which ispell
was built, case may or may not be significant in either the
root word or the flags, independently. Specifically, if the
compile-time option CAPITALIZATION is defined, case is
significant in the root word; if not, case is ignored in the
root word. If the compile-time option MASKBITS is set to a
value of 32, case is ignored in the flags; otherwise case is
significant in the flags. Contact your system administrator
or ispell maintainer for more information (or use the -vv
flag to find out). The dictionary should be sorted with the
-f flag of sort(1) before the hash file is built; this is
done automatically by munchlist(1), which is the normal way
of building dictionaries.
If the dictionary contains words that have string characters
(see the affix-file documentation below), they must be
written in the format given by the defstringtype statement
in the affix file. This will be the case for most non-
English languages. Be careful to use this format, rather
than that of your favorite formatter, when adding words to a
dictionary. (If you add words to your personal dictionary
during an ispell session, they will automatically be
converted to the correct format. This feature can be used
to convert an entire dictionary if necessary:)
echo qqqqq > dummy.dict
buildhash dummy.dict affix-file dummy.hash
awk '{print "*"}END{print "#"}' old-dict-file \
| ispell-a -T old-dict-string-type \
-d ./dummy.hash -p ./new-dict-file \
> /dev/null
rm dummy.*
The case of the root word controls the case of words
accepted by ispell, as follows:
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(1) If the root word appears only in lower case (e.g.,
bob), it will be accepted in lower case, capitalized,
or all capitals.
(2) If the root word appears capitalized (e.g., Robert), it
will not be accepted in all-lower case, but will be
accepted capitalized or all in capitals.
(3) If the root word appears all in capitals (e.g., UNIX),
it will only be accepted all in capitals.
(4) If the root word appears with a "funny" capitalization
(e.g., ITCorp), a word will be accepted only if it
follows that capitalization, or if it appears all in
capitals.
(5) More than one capitalization of a root word may appear
in the dictionary. Flags from different
capitalizations are combined by OR-ing them together.
Redundant capitalizations (e.g., bob and Bob) will be
combined by buildhash and by ispell (for personal
dictionaries), and can be removed from a raw dictionary by
munchlist.
For example, the dictionary:
bob
Robert
UNIX
ITcorp
ITCorp
will accept bob, Bob, BOB, Robert, ROBERT, UNIX, ITcorp,
ITCorp, and ITCORP, and will reject all others. Some of the
unacceptable forms are bOb, robert, Unix, and ItCorp.
As mentioned above, root words in any dictionary may be
extended by flags. Each flag is a single alphabetic
character, which represents a prefix or suffix that may be
added to the root to form a new word. For example, in an
English dictionary the D flag can be added to bathe to make
bathed. Since flags are represented as a single bit in the
hashed dictionary, this results in significant space
savings. The munchlist script will reduce an existing raw
dictionary by adding flags when possible.
When a word is extended with an affix, the affix will be
accepted only if it appears in the same case as the initial
(prefix) or final (suffix) letter of the word. Thus, for
example, the entry UNIX/M in the main dictionary (M means
add an apostrophe and an "s" to make a possessive) would
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accept UNIX'S but would reject UNIX's. If UNIX's is legal,
it must appear as a separate dictionary entry, and it will
not be combined by munchlist. (In general, you don't need
to worry about these things; munchlist guarantees that its
output dictionary will accept the same set of words as its
input, so all you have to do is add words to the dictionary
and occasionally run munchlist to reduce its size).
As mentioned, the affix definition file describes the
affixes associated with particular flags. It also describes
the character set used by the language.
Although the affix-definition grammar is designed for a
line-oriented layout, it is actually a free-format yacc
grammar and can be laid out weirdly if you want. Comments
are started by a pound (sharp) sign (#), and continue to the
end of the line. Backslashes are supported in the usual
fashion (\nnn, plus specials \n, \r, \t, \v, \f, \b, and the
new hex format \xnn). Any character with special meaning to
the parser can be changed to an uninterpreted token by
backslashing it; for example, you can declare a flag named
'asterisk' or 'colon' with flag \*: or flag \::.
The grammar will be presented in a top-down fashion, with
discussion of each element. An affix-definition file must
contain exactly one table:
table : [headers] [prefixes] [suffixes]
At least one of prefixes and suffixes is required. They can
appear in either order.
headers : [ options ] char-sets
The headers describe options global to this dictionary and
language. These include the character sets to be used and
the formatter, and the defaults for certain ispell flags.
options : { fmtr-stmt | opt-stmt | flag-stmt | num-stmt }
The options statements define the defaults for certain
ispell flags and for the character sets used by the
formatters.
fmtr-stmt : { nroff-stmt | tex-stmt }
A fmtr-stmt describes characters that have special meaning
to a formatter. Normally, this statement is not necessary,
but some languages may have preempted the usual defaults for
use as language-specific characters. In this case, these
statements may be used to redefine the special characters
expected by the formatter.
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nroff-stmt : { nroffchars | troffchars } string
The nroffchars statement allows redefinition of certain
nroff control characters. The string given must be exactly
five characters long, and must list substitutions for the
left and right parentheses ("()") , the period ("."), the
backslash ("\"), and the asterisk ("*"). (The right
parenthesis is not currently used, but is included for
completeness.) For example, the statement:
nroffchars {}.\\*
would replace the left and right parentheses with left and
right curly braces for purposes of parsing nroff/troff
strings, with no effect on the others (admittedly a
contrived example). Note that the backslash is escaped with
a backslash.
tex-stmt : { TeXchars | texchars } string
The TeXchars statement allows redefinition of certain
TeX/LaTeX control characters. The string given must be
exactly thirteen characters long, and must list
substitutions for the left and right parentheses ("()") ,
the left and right square brackets ("[]"), the left and
right curly braces ("{}"), the left and right angle brackets
("<>"), the backslash ("\"), the dollar sign ("$"), the
asterisk ("*"), the period or dot ("."), and the percent
sign ("%"). For example, the statement:
texchars ()\[]<\><\>\\$*.%
would replace the functions of the left and right curly
braces with the left and right angle brackets for purposes
of parsing TeX/LaTeX constructs, while retaining their
functions for the tib bibliographic preprocessor. Note that
the backslash, the left square bracket, and the right angle
bracket must be escaped with a backslash.
opt-stmt : { cmpnd-stmt | aff-stmt }
cmpnd-stmt : compoundwords compound-opt
aff-stmt : allaffixes on-or-off
on-or-off : { on | off }
compound-opt : { on-or-off | controlled character }
An opt-stmt controls certain ispell defaults that are best
made language-specific. The allaffixes statement controls
the default for the -P and -m options to ispell. If
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allaffixes is turned off (the default), ispell will default
to the behavior of the -P flag: root/affix suggestions will
only be made if there are no "near misses". If allaffixes
is turned on, ispell will default to the behavior of the -m
flag: root/affix suggestions will always be made. The
compoundwords statement controls the default for the -B and
-C options to ispell. If compoundwords is turned off (the
default), ispell will default to the behavior of the -B
flag: run-together words will be reported as errors. If
compoundwords is turned on, ispell will default to the
behavior of the -C flag: run-together words will be
considered as compounds if both are in the dictionary. This
is useful for languages such as German and Norwegian, which
form large numbers of compound words. Finally, if
compoundwords is set to controlled, only words marked with
the flag indicated by character (which should not be
otherwise used) will be allowed to participate in compound
formation. Because this option requires the flags to be
specified in the dictionary, it is not available from the
command line.
flag-stmt : flagmarker character
The flagmarker statement describes the character which is
used to separate affix flags from the root word in a raw
dictionary file. This must be a character which is not
found in any word (including in string characters; see
below). The default is "/" because this character is not
normally used to represent special characters in any
language.
num-stmt : compoundmin digit
The compoundmin statement controls the length of the two
components of a compound word. This only has an effect if
compoundwords is turned on or if the -C flag is given to
ispell. In that case, only words at least as long as the
given minimum will be accepted as components of a compound.
The default is 3 characters.
char-sets : norm-sets [ alt-sets ]
The character-set section describes the characters that can
be part of a word, and defines their collating order. There
must always be a definition of "normal" character sets; in
addition, there may be one or more partial definitions of
"alternate" sets which are used with various text
formatters.
norm-sets : [ deftype ] charset-group
A "normal" character set may optionally begin with a
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definition of the file suffixes that make use of this set.
Following this are one or more character-set declarations.
deftype : defstringtype name deformatter suffix*
The defstringtype declaration gives a list of file suffixes
which should make use of the default string characters
defined as part of the base character set; it is only
necessary if string characters are being defined. The name
parameter is a string giving the unique name associated with
these suffixes; often it is a formatter name. If the
formatter is a member of the troff family, "nroff" should be
used for the name associated with the most popular macro
package; members of the TeX family should use "tex". Other
names may be chosen freely, but they should be kept simple,
as they are used in ispell 's -T switch to specify a
formatter type. The deformatter parameter specifies the
deformatting style to use when processing files with the
given suffixes. Currently, this must be either tex or
nroff. The suffix parameters are a whitespace-separated
list of strings which, if present at the end of a filename,
indicate that the associated set of string characters should
be used by default for this file. For example, the suffix
list for the troff family typically includes suffixes such
as ".ms", ".me", ".mm", etc.
charset-group : { char-stmt | string-stmt | dup-stmt}*
A char-stmt describes single characters; a string-stmt
describes characters that must appear together as a string,
and which usually represent a single character in the target
language. Either may also describe conversion between upper
and lower case. A dup-stmt is used to describe alternate
forms of string characters, so that a single dictionary may
be used with several formatting programs that use different
conventions for representing non-ASCII characters.
char-stmt : wordchars character-range
| wordchars lowercase-range uppercase-range
| boundarychars character-range
| boundarychars lowercase-range uppercase-range
string-stmt : stringchar string
| stringchar lowercase-string uppercase-string
Characters described with the boundarychars statement are
considered part of a word only if they appear singly,
embedded between characters declared with the wordchars or
stringchar statements. For example, if the hyphen is a
boundary character (useful in French), the string "foo-bar"
would be a single word, but "-foo" would be the same as
"foo", and "foo--bar" would be two words separated by non-
word characters.
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If two ranges or strings are given in a char-stmt or
string-stmt, the first describes characters that are
interpreted as lowercase and the second describes uppercase.
In the case of a stringchar statement, the two strings must
be of the same length. Also, in a stringchar statement, the
actual strings may contain both uppercase and characters
themselves without difficulty; for instance, the statement
stringchar "\\*(sS" "\\*(Ss"
is legal and will not interfere with (or be interfered with
by) other declarations of of "s" and "S" as lower and upper
case, respectively.
A final note on string characters: some languages collate
certain special characters as if they were strings. For
example, the German "a-umlaut" is traditionally sorted as if
it were "ae". Ispell is not capable of this; each character
must be treated as an individual entity. So in certain
cases, ispell will sort a list of words into a different
order than the standard "dictionary" order for the target
language.
alt-sets : alttype [ alt-stmt* ]
Because different formatters use different notations to
represent non-ASCII characters, ispell must be aware of the
representations used by these formatters. These are
declared as alternate sets of string characters.
alttype : altstringtype name suffix*
The altstringtype statement introduces each set by declaring
the associated formatter name and filename suffix list.
This name and list are interpreted exactly as in the
defstringtype statement above. Following this header are
one or more alt-stmts which declare the alternate string
characters used by this formatter.
alt-stmt : altstringchar alt-string std-string
The altstringchar statement describes alternate
representations for string characters. For example, the -mm
macro package of troff represents the German "a-umlaut" as
a\*:, while TeX uses the sequence \"a. If the troff
versions are declared as the standard versions using
stringchar, the TeX versions may be declared as alternates
by using the statement
altstringchar \\\"a a\\*:
When the altstringchar statement is used to specify
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alternate forms, all forms for a particular formatter must
be declared together as a group. Also, each formatter or
macro package must provide a complete set of characters,
both upper- and lower-case, and the character sequences used
for each formatter must be completely distinct. Character
sequences which describe upper- and lower-case versions of
the same printable character must also be the same length.
It may be necessary to define some new macros for a given
formatter to satisfy these restrictions. (The current
version of buildhash does not enforce these restrictions,
but failure to obey them may result in errors being
introduced into files that are processed with ispell.)
An important minor point is that ispell assumes that all
characters declared as wordchars or boundarychars will
occupy exactly one position on the terminal screen.
A single character-set statement can declare either a single
character or a contiguous range of characters. A range is
given as in egrep and the shell: [a-z] means lowercase
alphabetics; [^a-z] means all but lowercase, etc. All
character-set statements are combined (unioned) to produce
the final list of characters that may be part of a word.
The collating order of the characters is defined by the
order of their declaration; if a range is used, the
characters are considered to have been declared in ASCII
order. Characters that have case are collated next to each
other, with the uppercase character first.
The character-declaration statements have a rather strange
behavior caused by its need to match each lowercase
character with its uppercase equivalent. In any given
wordchars or boundarychars statement, the characters in each
range are first sorted into ASCII collating sequence, then
matched one-for-one with the other range. (The two ranges
must have the same number of characters). Thus, for
example, the two statements:
wordchars [aeiou] [AEIOU]
wordchars [aeiou] [UOIEA]
would produce exactly the same effect. To get the vowels to
match up "wrong", you would have to use separate statements:
wordchars a U
wordchars e O
wordchars i I
wordchars o E
wordchars u A
which would cause uppercase 'e' to be 'O', and lowercase 'O'
to be 'e'. This should normally be a problem only with
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languages which have been forced to use a strange ASCII
collating sequence. If your uppercase and lowercase letters
both collate in the same order, you shouldn't have to worry
about this "feature".
The prefixes and suffixes sections have exactly the same
syntax, except for the introductory keyword.
prefixes : prefixes flagdef*
suffixes : suffixes flagdef*
flagdef : flag [*|~] char : repl*
A prefix or suffix table consists of an introductory keyword
and a list of flag definitions. Flags can be defined more
than once, in which case the definitions are combined. Each
flag controls one or more repls (replacements) which are
conditionally applied to the beginnings or endings of
various words.
Flags are named by a single character char. Depending on a
configuration option, this character can be either any
uppercase letter (the default configuration) or any 7-bit
ASCII character. Most languages should be able to get along
with just 26 flags.
A flag character may be prefixed with one or more option
characters. (If you wish to use one of the option
characters as a flag character, simply enclose it in double
quotes.)
The asterisk (*) option means that this flag participates in
cross-product formation. This only matters if the file
contains both prefix and suffix tables. If so, all prefixes
and suffixes marked with an asterisk will be applied in all
cross-combinations to the root word. For example, consider
the root fix with prefixes pre and in, and suffixes es and
ed. If all flags controlling these prefixes and suffixes
are marked with an asterisk, then the single root fix would
also generate prefix, prefixes, prefixed, infix, infixes,
infixed, fix, fixes, and fixed. Cross-product formation can
produce a large number of words quickly, some of which may
be illegal, so watch out. If cross-products produce illegal
words, munchlist will not produce those flag combinations,
and the flag will not be useful.
repl : condition* > [ - strip-string , ] append-string
The ~ option specifies that the associated flag is only
active when a compound word is being formed. This is useful
in a language like German, where the form of a word
sometimes changes inside a compound.
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A repl is a conditional rule for modifying a root word. Up
to 8 conditions may be specified. If the conditions are
satisfied, the rules on the right-hand side of the repl are
applied, as follows:
(1) If a strip-string is given, it is first stripped from
the beginning or ending (as appropriate) of the root
word.
(2) Then the append-string is added at that point.
For example, the condition . means "any word", and the
condition Y means "any word ending in Y". The following
(suffix) replacements:
. > MENT
Y > -Y,IES
would change induce to inducement and fly to flies. (If
they were controlled by the same flag, they would also
change fly to flyment, which might not be what was wanted.
Munchlist can be used to protect against this sort of
problem; see the command sequence given below.)
No matter how much you might wish it, the strings on the
right must be strings of specific characters, not ranges.
The reasons are rooted deeply in the way ispell works, and
it would be difficult or impossible to provide for more
flexibility. For example, you might wish to write:
[EY] > -[EY],IES
This will not work. Instead, you must use two separate
rules:
E > -E,IES
Y > -Y,IES
The application of repls can be restricted to certain words
with conditions:
condition : { . | character | range }
A condition is a restriction on the characters that adjoin,
and/or are replaced by, the right-hand side of the repl. Up
to 8 conditions may be given, which should be enough context
for anyone. The right-hand side will be applied only if the
conditions in the repl are satisfied. The conditions also
implicitly define a length; roots shorter than the number of
conditions will not pass the test. (As a special case, a
condition of a single dot "." defines a length of zero, so
that the rule applies to all words indiscriminately). This
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length is independent of the separate test that insists that
all flags produce an output word length of at least four.
Conditions that are single characters should be separated by
white space. For example, to specify words ending in "ED",
write:
E D > -ED,ING # As in covered > covering
If you write:
ED > -ED,ING
the effect will be the same as:
[ED] > -ED,ING
As a final minor, but important point, it is sometimes
useful to rebuild a dictionary file using an incompatible
suffix file. For example, suppose you expanded the "R" flag
to generate "er" and "ers" (thus making the Z flag somewhat
obsolete). To build a new dictionary newdict that, using
newaffixes, will accept exactly the same list of words as
the old list olddict did using oldaffixes, the -c switch of
munchlist is useful, as in the following example:
$ munchlist -c oldaffixes -l newaffixes olddict > newdict
If you use this procedure, your new dictionary will always
accept the same list the original did, even if you badly
screwed up the affix file. This is because munchlist
compares the words generated by a flag with the original
word list, and refuses to use any flags that generate
illegal words. (But don't forget that the munchlist step
takes a long time and eats up temporary file space).
EXAMPLES
As an example of conditional suffixes, here is the
specification of the S flag from the English affix file:
flag *S:
[^AEIOU]Y > -Y,IES # As in imply > implies
[AEIOU]Y > S # As in convey > conveys
[SXZH] > ES # As in fix > fixes
[^SXZHY] > S # As in bat > bats
The first line applies to words ending in Y, but not in
vowel-Y. The second takes care of the vowel-Y words. The
third then handles those words that end in a sibilant or
near-sibilant, and the last picks up everything else.
Note that the conditions are written very carefully so that
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they apply to disjoint sets of words. In particular, note
that the fourth line excludes words ending in Y as well as
the obvious SXZH. Otherwise, it would convert "imply" into
"implys".
Although the English affix file does not do so, you can also
have a flag generate more than one variation on a root word.
For example, we could extend the English "R" flag as
follows:
flag *R:
E > R # As in skate > skater
E > RS # As in skate > skaters
[^AEIOU]Y > -Y,IER # As in multiply > multiplier
[^AEIOU]Y > -Y,IERS # As in multiply > multipliers
[AEIOU]Y > ER # As in convey > conveyer
[AEIOU]Y > ERS # As in convey > conveyers
[^EY] > ER # As in build > builder
[^EY] > ERS # As in build > builders
This flag would generate both "skater" and "skaters" from
"skate". This capability can be very useful in languages
that make use of noun, verb, and adjective endings. For
instance, one could define a single flag that generated all
of the German "weak" verb endings.
SEE ALSO
ispell(1)
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