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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.
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(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).
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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:
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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
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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 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
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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.
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.
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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 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.
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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 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
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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:
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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. (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
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[^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)
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