spell(1)                                                       spell(1)

  spell

  NAME

    spell - check spelling in text

  SYNOPSIS

    spell [-bvx] [+local_dict] [file ...]

  DESCRIPTION

    The spell(1) utility compares words from one or more files specified in
    file (or standard input if no files are named) with those in a spelling
    list. It writes to standard output all words that were not found on the
    list.

    The spell(1) utility takes the following options:

    -b
        Check against a British dictionary. The default dictionary is American
        English. The British dictionary contains spellings such as colour,
        behaviour, and recognise.

    -v
        Write all words not in the spelling list. This is the default
        behavior. Some implementations of spell(1) also check against possible
        permutations of the words in the spelling list; for those systems,
        this option turns off that behavior.

    -x
        Display root stems of words as =.
    +local_dict

        Treat the words in the file local_dict as correctly spelled. They will
        not appear in the spell(1) output. These words are checked in addition
        to the usual dictionary file.

  DIAGNOSTICS

    The spell(1) command exits with a status of 0 on success, and >0 if an
    error occurred.

  FILES

    The spell(1) command makes use of the following files:

    /usr/share/spell/british.hash
        British English dictionary extensions.

    /usr/share/spell/english.hash
        American english dictionary file (the default).

  NOTE

    The spell(1) command is a wrapper around the ispell(1) command. For
    information on dictionary files, formats, and other options that might be
    supported, see the reference page for ispell(1).

  SEE ALSO

    ispell(1)