If you have a dictionary file (like /usr/dict/words under UNIX) it is easy to write a simple misspelling-detector in perl:

my %dict;
open D,"</usr/dict/words";
while(<D>){
  chomp;
  $dict{lc($_)}=$_;
}
close D;

my $text='Is there anyway to write a spell checker in perl?? Please he
+lp.';
my @words=split /[^a-zA-Z0-9']+/,$text;
foreach (@words){
  if(!defined $dict{lc($_)}){
    print "\"$_\" is not in the dictionary\n";
  }
}
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Nota Bene! You should be using Lingua::Ispell, not Text::Ispell.

jdporter
The 6th Rule of Perl Club is -- There is no Rule #6.

$dictfile="/some/path/to/dictfile";
#Dictfile should have a all words (or regex for words), one per line
open (DICT, $dictfile) or die "Can't open $dictfile:$!";
while(<DICT>){
    $words{lc($_)}=1;  #using hash as cheap lookup
    #Note that a "real" dictionary file will nail you on efficency her
+e.  Perhaps a Dbm would be better?
}
while(<>){
    foreach $word (split($_)){
        if (!defined($words{lc($word)})){
            print "$.:$word?\n";
        }
    }
}
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Now the perl wizards will trounce this code
Let them, indeed. But you'll still get my vote. Pretty cool in my ragged little book :-)

my @words = split(" ", "Hello, I live in a blue hoose.");
for (@words) {
        my @spell = `echo $_ | ispell -a -S`;
        if (grep /^\*/, @spell) {
                next;
        }else{
                @spell = grep /^\s*&/, @spell;
                chomp $spell[0];
                my @rest = split(/\ |\,\ /,$spell[0]);
                @rest = splice(@rest,4);
                if (scalar(@rest) != 0) {
                        print "Alternate spellings for $_: @rest\n";
                }
        }
}
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Milage may vary, change as needed.

This did bring up something I would like to see in Perl (I need to check p5p). I think it would be useful to do:

my @rest = splice((my @tmp = split(/\ |\,\ /,$spell[0])),4);
or
my @rest = splice(split(/\ |\,\ /,$spell[0]),4);

But, splice() doesn't accept a split() or list assignment as it's first argument. I think it should. But, that is likely more of a discussion for elsewhere.

Cheers,
KM

Thank You

You have no idea how long I've tried to discover how to get ispell to read from stdin. I've read the man pages ten times (funny though, now that I know the flag is -a, I can look in the man and find it right away.) Sigh.

 use Text::Ispell qw( spellcheck );
 Text::Ispell::allow_compounds(1);
 for my $r ( spellcheck( "hello hacking perl salmoning fruithammer shr
+dlu 42" ) )
   if ( $r->{'type'} eq 'ok' ) {
     # as in the case of 'hello'
     print "'$r->{'term'}' was found in the dictionary.\n";
   }
   elsif ( $r->{'type'} eq 'root' ) {
     # as in the case of 'hacking'
     print "'$r->{'term'}' can be formed from root '$r->{'root'}'\n";
   }
   elsif ( $r->{'type'} eq 'miss' ) {
     # as in the case of 'perl'
     print "'$r->{'term'}' was not found in the dictionary;\n";
     print "Near misses: $r->{'misses'}\n";
   }
   elsif ( $r->{'type'} eq 'guess' ) {
     # as in the case of 'salmoning'
     print "'$r->{'term'}' was not found in the dictionary;\n";
     print "Root/affix Guesses: $r->{'guesses'}\n";
   }
   elsif ( $r->{'type'} eq 'compound' ) {
     # as in the case of 'fruithammer'
     print "'$r->{'term'}' is a valid compound word.\n";
   }
   elsif ( $r->{'type'} eq 'none' ) {
     # as in the case of 'shrdlu'
     print "No match for term '$r->{'term'}'\n";
   }
   
 }
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