On Unix-like operating systems, the spell command is a spell-checking program which scans a text file for misspelled words, and prints each misspelled word on its own line.

This page covers the GNU/Linux version of spell.

Description

spell is a very minimalistic spell-checking program, based on the original UNIX spell checker. It reads the contents of file FILE, word for word, checking them against its dictionary. If a word does not correspond with any of spell’s dictionary words, the word is printed.

  • Description
  • Spell and ispell
  • Syntax
  • Examples
  • Related commands
  • Linux commands help

If an input FILE is not specified, or is specified as a dash ("-"), spell performs a spell check of standard input.

Spell and ispell

spell is essentially a wrapper for the more complex ispell utility. However, unlike ispell (or the very similar GNU program, aspell), spell does not make any spelling suggestions. It only reports which words were misspelled.

Syntax

spell [OPTIONS] FILE …

Options

Examples

spell -on words.txt words2.txt

Checks the spelling of files words.txt and words2.txt, printing the file name (-o) and the line number (-n) of each misspelled word. Output resembles the following:

words.txt:1: Thisz words.txt:2: fyle words.txt:5: haz words.txt:13: miztakes words.txt:16: innit words2.txt:1: Mannny words2.txt:1: wordsis words2.txt:4: aree words2.txt:6: miszpelleds words2.txt:19: inthis words2.txt:21: fyyle words2.txt:42: allso

deroff — Remove nroff/troff, tbl, and eqn constructs from files.eqn — Language processor for describing equations.sort — Sort the lines in a text file.tbl — Preprocessor which formats tables for nroff or troff.troff — Typeset or format documents for terminal display or line-printer.