aspell - interactive spell checker

aspell [options] <command>

aspell is a utility that can function as an ispell -a replacement, as an independent spell checker, as a test utility to test out Aspell features, and as a utility for managing dictionaries.

<command> is one of:

-?,help

display the help message

-c,check file

to spell-check a file

-a,pipe

ispell -a compatibility mode

list

produce a list of misspelled words from standard input

[dump] config

dump the current configuration to stdout

config key

print the current value of an option

soundslike

return the soundslike equivalent for each word entered

filter

pass standard input through the same set of filters that would be used to spell check a document

-v,version

print version number and exit

dump|create|merge master|personal|repl wordlist

dump, create, or merge a master, personal, or replacement word list

The following options may be used to control which dictionaries to use and how they behave.

-d,--master=string

base name of the dictionary to use. If this option is specified then Aspell will either use this dictionary or die.

--dict-dir=dir

location of the main word list

-l,--lang=string

language to use, it follows the same format of the LANG environmental variable on most systems. It consists of the two letter ISO 639 language code and an optional two letter ISO 3166 country code after a dash or underscore. The default value is based on the value of the LC_MESSAGES locale.

--size=string

the preferred size of the word list

--jargon=string

an extra information to distinguish two different word lists that have the same lang and size.

--word-list-path=list

search path for word list information files

--module-search-order=list

list of available modules, modules that come first on this list have a higher priority. Currently there is only one speller module.

-p,--personal=file

personal word list file name

--repl=file

replacements list file name

--extra-dicts=list

extra dictionaries to use.

--strip-accents=boolean

strip accents from all words in the dictionary

These options control the behavior of Aspell when checking documents.

-W,--ignore=integer

ignore words <= n chars

--ignore-case=boolean

ignore case when checking words

--ignore-repl=boolean

ignore commands to store replacement pairs

--save-repl=boolean

save the replacement word list on save allkeyboard (file) the base name of the keyboard definition file to use (see section 4.4.3)

--sug-mode=mode

suggestion mode = ultra | fast | normal | bad-spellers

These options modify the behavior of the various filters.

--filter=list

add or removes a filter

--mode=string

sets the filter mode. Mode is one if none, url, email, sgml, tex, or debctrl, among others. (The short cut options '-e' may be used for email, '-H' for Html/Sgml, '-t' for Tex, or '-D' for debctrl.)

--encoding=string

The encoding the input text is in. Valid values are ``utf-8'', ``iso8859-*'', ``koi8-r'', ``viscii'', ``cp1252'', ``machine unsigned 16'', ``machine unsigned 32''. However, the Aspell utility will currently only function correctly with 8-bit encodings. utf-8 support is planned for the future. The two ``machine unsigned'' encodings are intended to be used by other programs using the Aspell library and it is unlikely the Aspell utility will ever support these encodings.

--add|rem-email-quote=list

email quote characters

--email-margin=integer

number of chars that can appear before the quote char

--sgml-check=list

SGML attributes to always check

--sgml-extension=list

SGML file extensions

--tex-command=list

TeX commands

--tex-check-comments=boolean

check TeX comments

These may be used to control the behavior of run-together words.

-C|-B,--run-together=boolean

consider run-together words legal

--run-together-limit=integer

maximum numbers that can be strung together

--run-together-min=integer

minimal length of interior words

Miscellaneous options that don't fall under any other category.

--conf=file

main configuration file

--conf-dir=dir

location of main configuration file

--data-dir=dir

location of language data files

--local-data-dir=dir

alternative location of language data files. This directory is searched before data-dir. It defaults to the same directory the actual main word list is in (which is not necessarily dict-dir).

--home-dir=dir

location for personal files

--per-conf=file

personal configuration file

--prefix=dir

prefix directory

-b|-x--backup=boolean

create a backup file by appending .bak to the file name. Only applies when the command is check.

--time=boolean

time load time and suggest time in pipe mode.

--reverse=boolean

reverse the order of the suggestions list

--keymapping=string

the keymapping to use, either aspell for the default mapping or ispell to use the same mapping that the ispell utility uses

In addition Aspell will try to make sense out of ispell's command line options so that it can function as a drop-in replacement for ispell. If Aspell is run without any command line options it will display a brief help screen and quit.

Aspell can also accept options via a personal or global configuration file. The exact files to be used are specified by the options per-conf and conf respectfully but the personal configuration file is normally .aspell.conf located in the $HOME directory. Each line of the configuration file has the format:

option [value]

where option is any one of the standard library options above without the leading dashes. For example the following line will set the default language to Swiss German:

lang de_CH

There may be any number of spaces between the option and the value however it can only be spaces, i.e. there is no '=' between the option name and the value. Comments may also be included by preceding them with a '#' as anything from a '#' to a newline is ignored. Blank lines are also allowed. Values set in the personal configuration file override those in the global file. Options specified at either the command line or via an environmental variable override those specified by either configuration file.

The global configuration file for Aspell is /etc/aspell.conf and the per user configuration file is ~/.aspell.conf

run-with-aspell(1), word-list-compress(1), aspell-import(1)

Aspell is fully documented in its Texinfo manual. See the `aspell' entry in info for more complete documentation.

This manual page was written by Brian Nelson <pyro@debian.org> based on the Aspell User's Manual, Copyright © 2002 Kevin Atkinson.