Provided by: ispell_3.4.06-1_amd64 bug

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:

       (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 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.

              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
       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 ] [ set-options ] charset-group

       A  "normal" character set may optionally begin with a 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  plain,  tex,
       nroff,  or  html.  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.

              set-options :  options charset-options*

       The options declaration activates one  or  more  white-separated  options  for  the  given
       character  set  (default  or  alternate).   Currently,  two  options  are  supported:  The
       raw_display option indicates that string characters should be displayed as-is even if some
       of  their  components  appear to be non-printing; this option is useful for character sets
       such as UTF-8  or  (if  the  terminal  is  configured  appropriately)  ISO  Latin-1.   The
       squeeze_string  option  indicates  that when ispell is interacting with an external client
       such as emacs (via the -a flag), string characters should be considered to be of length  1
       rather  than  their  true  length  in  bytes.   This  option  is needed to allow ispell to
       synchronize with emacs when processing files containing UTF-8 characters; it  should  only
       be given for UTF-8 character sets.

              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.

       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 [ set-options ] [ 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  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  a  collating
       sequence  by  their  byte values, 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 languages that have been forced to use a strange 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.

       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 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.

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 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)

                                              local                                     ISPELL(5)