Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site asgb.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!hplabs!hao!asgb!devine
From: devine@asgb.UUCP (Robert J. Devine)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: literacy
Message-ID: <816@asgb.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Nov-85 19:36:38 EST
Article-I.D.: asgb.816
Posted: Mon Nov 11 19:36:38 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 14-Nov-85 00:23:44 EST
References: <747@cyb-eng.UUCP> <9700105@uiucdcs> <281@ihu1n.UUCP> <658@ecsvax.UUCP> <14@cstvax.UUCP> <912@rlvd.UUCP>
Organization: Burroughs Corp. ASG, Boulder Colo.
Lines: 17

> In article <912@rlvd.UUCP> mike@rlvd.UUCP (Mike Woods) writes:
> 
> I've been working on a spell correction program for somewhile (in my
> spare time). To generate a dictionary I took the contents of our
> news spool directory, tokenised it and did a sort -u. I then passed
> it through spell(1) to remove the garbage. When I came to look at
> what spell had accepted I decided never to use spell again!

  Three years ago I wrote a spell(1)-like program for a VMS machine.  To
generate a dictionary, I grabbed the UNIX dictionary off of a campus
machine.  It may have just been that the system administrator had loaded
it with various words without checking their spelling.  Regardless of
their origin, many misspelled words were present.

  So, be wary!  Don't take "spell" as the final authority.

Bob