hunspell(1) General Commands Manual hunspell(1)
NAME
hunspell - spell checker, stemmer and morphological analyzer
SYNOPSIS
hunspell [-1aDGHhLlmnOrstvwX] [--check-url] [--check-apostrophe] [-d
dict[,dict2,...]] [--help] [-i enc] [-p dict] [-vv] [--version]
[text/OpenDocument/TeX/LaTeX/HTML/SGML/XML/nroff/troff file(s)]
DESCRIPTION
Hunspell is fashioned after the Ispell program. The most common usage
is "hunspell" or "hunspell filename". Without filename parameter, hun-
spell checks the standard input. Typing "cat" and "exsample" in two in-
put lines, results an asterisk (it means "cat" is a correct word) and a
line with corrections:
$ hunspell -d en_US
Hunspell 1.2.3
*
& exsample 4 0: example, examples, ex sample, ex-sample
Correct words signed with an '*', '+' or '-', unrecognized words signed
with '#' or '&' in output lines (see later). (Close the standard input
with Ctrl-d on Unix/Linux and Ctrl-Z Enter or Ctrl-C on Windows.)
With filename parameters, hunspell will display each word of the files
which does not appear in the dictionary at the top of the screen and al-
low you to change it. If there are "near misses" in the dictionary,
then they are also displayed on following lines. Finally, the line con-
taining 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 suggested words. Commands are single characters
as follows (case is ignored):
R Replace the misspelled word completely.
Space Accept the word this time only.
A Accept the word for the rest of this hunspell session.
I Accept the word, capitalized as it is in the file, and up-
date private dictionary.
U Accept the word, and add an uncapitalized (actually, all
lower-case) version to the private dictionary.
S Ask a stem and a model word and store them in the private
dictionary. The stem will be accepted also with the af-
fixes of the model word.
0-n Replace with one of the suggested words.
X Write the rest of this file, ignoring misspellings, and
start next file.
Q Exit immediately and leave the file unchanged.
^Z Suspend hunspell.
? Give help screen.
OPTIONS
-1 Check only first field in lines (delimiter = tabulator).
-a The -a option is intended to be used from other programs through
a pipe. In this mode, hunspell prints a one-line version identi-
fication 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 dictionary, or your personal dictionary, then
the line contains only a '*'. If the word was found through af-
fix removal, then the line contains a '+', a space, and the root
word. If the word was found through compound formation (concate-
nation of two words, 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 be-
tween the beginning of the line and the beginning of the mis-
spelled word, a colon, another space, and a list of the near
misses separated by commas and spaces.
Also, each near miss or guess is capitalized the same as the in-
put word unless such capitalization is illegal; in the latter
case each near miss is capitalized correctly according to the
dictionary.
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 be-
ginning of the line. Each sentence of text input is terminated
with an additional blank line, indicating that hunspell has com-
pleted processing the input line.
These output lines can be summarized as follows:
OK: *
Root: + <root>
Compound:
-
Miss: & <original> <count> <offset>: <miss>, <miss>, ...
None: # <original> <offset>
For example, a dummy dictionary containing the words "fray",
"Frey", "fry", and "refried" might produce the following response
to the command "echo 'frqy refries | hunspell -a":
(#) Hunspell 0.4.1 (beta), 2005-05-26
& frqy 3 0: fray, Frey, fry
& refries 1 5: refried
This mode is also suitable for interactive use when you want to
figure out the spelling of a single word (but this is the default
behavior of hunspell without -a, too).
When in the -a mode, hunspell will also accept lines of single
words prefixed with any of '*', '&', '@', '+', '-', '~', '#',
'!', '%', '`', or '^'. A line starting with '*' tells hunspell
to insert the word into the user's dictionary (similar to the I
command). A line starting with '&' tells hunspell to insert an
all-lowercase version of the word into the user's dictionary
(similar to the U command). A line starting with '@' causes hun-
spell 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 hunspell to parse future input according the
syntax of that formatter. A line consisting solely of a '+' will
place hunspell in TeX/LaTeX mode (similar to the -t option) and
'-' returns hunspell 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 hunspell to set internal parameters (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 pe-
riod must be included. Instead of a file name or suffix, a
unique name, as listed in the language affix file, may be speci-
fied.) 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 hunspell to normal (non-terse)
mode. A line prefixed with '`' will turn on verbose-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 re-
moved before it is passed to the spell-checking code. It is rec-
ommended that programmatic interfaces prefix every data line with
an uparrow to protect themselves against future changes in hun-
spell.
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, hunspell will not print lines beginning with '*',
'+', or '-', all of which indicate correct words. This signifi-
cantly improves running speed when the driving program is going
to ignore correct words anyway.
In verbose-correction mode, hunspell includes the original word
immediately after the indicator character in output lines begin-
ning with '*', '+', and '-', which simplifies interaction for
some programs.
--check-apostrophe
Check and force Unicode apostrophes (U+2019), if one of the ASCII
or Unicode apostrophes is specified by the spelling dictionary,
as a word character (see WORDCHARS, ICONV and OCONV in hun-
spell(5)).
--check-url
Check URLs, e-mail addresses and directory paths.
-D Show detected path of the loaded dictionary, and list of the
search path and the available dictionaries.
-d dict,dict2,...
Set dictionaries by their base names with or without paths. Ex-
ample of the syntax:
-d en_US,en_geo,en_med,de_DE,de_med
en_US and de_DE are base dictionaries, they consist of aff and dic file
pairs: en_US.aff, en_US.dic and de_DE.aff, de_DE.dic. En_geo, en_med,
de_med are special dictionaries: dictionaries without affix file. Spe-
cial dictionaries are optional extension of the base dictionaries usu-
ally with special (medical, law etc.) terms. There is no naming conven-
tion for special dictionaries, only the ".dic" extension: dictionaries
without affix file will be an extension of the preceding base dictionary
(right order of the parameter list needs for good suggestions). First
item of -d parameter list must be a base dictionary.
-G Print only correct words or lines.
-H The input file is in SGML/HTML format.
-h, --help
Short help.
-i enc Set input encoding.
-L Print lines with misspelled words.
-l The "list" option is used to produce a list of misspelled words
from the standard input.
-m Analyze the words of the input text (see also hunspell(5) about
morphological analysis). Without dictionary morphological data,
signs the flags of the affixes of the word forms for dictionary
developers.
-n The input file is in nroff/troff format.
-O The input file is in OpenDocument (ODF or Flat ODF) format. If
unzip program is not installed, install it before using this op-
tion.
-P password
Set password for encrypted dictionaries.
-p dict
Set path of personal dictionary. The default dictionary depends
on the locale settings. The following environment variables are
searched: LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES, and LANG. If none are set then the
default personal dictionary is $HOME/.hunspell_default.
Setting -d or the DICTIONARY environmental variable, personal
dictionary will be $HOME/.hunspell_dicname
-r Warn of the rare words, which are also potential spelling mis-
takes.
-s Stem the words of the input text (see also hunspell(5) about
stemming). It depends from the dictionary data.
-t The input file is in TeX or LaTeX format.
-v, --version
Print version number.
-vv Print ispell(1) compatible version number.
-w Print misspelled words (= lines) from one word/line input.
-X The input file is in XML format.
EXAMPLES
hunspell example.html
Interactive spell checking of an HTML file with the default dic-
tionary.
hunspell -d en_US example.html
Interactive spell checking of an HTML file with the en_US dictio-
nary.
hunspell -d en_US,en_US_med medical.txt
Interactive spell checking with multiple dictionaries.
hunspell *.odt
Interactive spell checking of ODF documents.
hunspell -l *.odt
List bad words of ODF documents
hunspell -l *.odt | sort | uniq >unrecognized
Saving unrecognized words of ODF documents (filtering duplica-
tions).
hunspell -p unrecognized_but_good *.odt
Interactive spell checking of ODF documents, using the previously
saved and reduced word list, as a personal dictionary, to speed
up spell checking.
ENVIRONMENT
DICTIONARY
Similar to -d.
DICPATH
Dictionary path.
WORDLIST
Equivalent to -p.
FILES
The default dictionary depends on the locale settings. The following en-
vironment variables are searched: LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES, and LANG. If none
are set then the following fallbacks are used:
/usr/share/myspell/default.aff Path of default affix file. See hun-
spell(5).
/usr/share/myspell/default.dic Path of default dictionary file. See
hunspell(5).
$HOME/.hunspell_default. Default path to personal dictionary.
SEE ALSO
hunspell (3), hunspell(5)
AUTHOR
Author of Hunspell executable is László Németh. For Hunspell library,
see hunspell(3).
This manual based on Ispell's manual. See ispell(1).
2014-05-27 hunspell(1)
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