Please Note: this module was previously known as Text::Ispell.
if you have Text::Ispell installed on your system, it is now
obsolete and should be replaced by Lingua::Ispell.


Note:
A simple "spellchecking" program is included in this distribution.
It is a perl program named "spellcheck".  It simply prints the
analysis of the input text; it provides no way to modify the text. 
It is simply given as a demonstration of the module.  Type 
    spellcheck -h
for a usage summary.  If no input files are specified, it will
read from stdin.  After each line of input, it will print the
analysis of the terms.  By default, it only gives output for
terms which are "incorrect".  Give it the -v option to have it
report on the "correct" terms as well.

Tests:
'make test' currently does nothing.  To test the installation,
try out the "spellcheck" program provided. 

__POD__

NAME
    Lingua::Ispell.pm - a module encapsulating access to the
    Ispell program.

SYNOPSIS
     # Brief:
     use Lingua::Ispell;
     Lingua::Ispell::spellcheck( $string );
     # or
     use Lingua::Ispell qw( spellcheck ); # import the function
     spellcheck( $string );

     # Useful:
     use Lingua::Ispell qw( :all );  # import all symbols
     for my $r ( spellcheck( "hello hacking perl shrdlu 42" ) ) {
       print "$r->{'type'}: $r->{'term'}\n";
     }

DESCRIPTION
    Lingua::Ispell::spellcheck() takes one argument. It must be a
    string, and it should contain only printable characters. One
    allowable exception is a terminal newline, which will be
    chomped off anyway. The line is fed to a coprocess running
    ispell for analysis. The line is parsed on non-wordchars
    into a sequence of terms. By default, the set of wordchars
    is defined in ispell as letters, digits, and the apostrophe.
    In other words, the line is subjected the equivalent of

      split /[^a-zA-Z0-9']+/

    (ispell has a means to add characters to the default set,
    but currently Lingua::Ispell does not provide access to that
    feature.)

    The result of ispell's analysis of each term is a
    categorization of the term into one of six types: ok, root,
    miss, none, compound, and guess. Some of these carry
    additional information.

    Lingua::Ispell::spellcheck returns a list of objects, each
    corresponding to a term in the spellchecked string. Each
    object is a hash (hash-ref) with at least two entries:
    'term' and 'type'. The former contains the term ispell is
    reporting on, and the latter is ispell's determination of
    that term's type (see above). For types 'ok' and 'none',
    that is all the information there is. For the type 'root',
    an additional hash entry is present: 'root'. Its value is
    the word which ispell identified in the dictionary as being
    the likely root of the current term. For the type 'miss', an
    additional hash entry is present: 'misses'. Its value is a
    string of words, comma-separated, which ispell identified as
    being "near-misses" of the current term, when scanning the
    dictionary.

    A quickie example:

     use Lingua::Ispell qw( spellcheck );
     Lingua::Ispell::allow_compounds(1);
     for my $r (
       spellcheck( "hello hacking perl salmoning fruithammer shrdlu 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";
       }
       # and numbers are skipped entirely, as in the case of 42.
     }

  ERRORS

    'Lingua::Ispell::spellcheck()' starts the ispell coprocess if
    the coprocess seems not to exist. Ordinarily this is simply
    the first time it's called.

    ispell is spawned via the 'Open2::open2()' function, which
    throws an exception (i.e. dies) if the spawn fails. The
    caller should be prepared to catch this exception -- unless,
    of course, the default behavior of die is acceptable.

  Nota Bene

    The full location of the ispell executable is stored in the
    variable '$Lingua::Ispell::path'. The default value is
    /usr/local/bin/ispell. If your ispell executable has some
    name other than this, then you must set
    '$Lingua::Ispell::path' accordingly before you call
    'Lingua::Ispell::spellcheck()' (or any other function in the
    module) for the first time!

AUX FUNCTIONS
  add_word(word)

    Adds a word to the personal dictionary. Be careful of
    capitalization. If you want the word to be added "case-
    insensitively", you should call 'add_word_lc()'

  add_word_lc(word)

    Adds a word to the personal dictionary, in lower-case form.
    This allows ispell to match it in a case-insensitive manner.

  accept_word(word)

    Similar to adding a word to the dictionary, in that it
    causes ispell to accept the word as valid, but it does not
    actually add it to the dictionary. Presumably the effects of
    this only last for the current ispell session, which will
    mysteriously end if any of the coprocess-restarting
    functions are called...

  parse_according_to(formatter)

    Causes ispell to parse subsequent input lines according to
    the specified formatter. As of ispell v. 3.1.20, only 'tex'
    and 'nroff' are supported.

  set_params_by_language(language)

    Causes ispell to set its internal operational parameters
    according to the given language. Legal arguments to this
    function, and its effects, are currently unknown by the
    author of Lingua::Ispell.

  save_dictionary()

    Causes ispell to save the current state of the dictionary to
    its disk file. Presumably ispell would ordinarily only do
    this upon exit.

  terse_mode(bool:terse)

    In terse mode, ispell will not produce reports for "correct"
    words. This means that the calling program will not receive
    results of the types 'ok', 'root', and 'compound'.

    ispell starts up in NON-terse mode, i.e. reports are
    produced for all terms, not just "incorrect" ones.

FUNCTIONS THAT RESTART ISPELL
    The following functions cause the current ispell coprocess,
    if any, to terminate. This means that all the changes to the
    state of ispell made by the above functions will be lost,
    and their respective values reset to their defaults. The
    only function above whose effect is persistent is
    'save_dictionary()'.

    Perhaps in the future we will figure out a good way to make
    this state information carry over from one instantiation of
    the coprocess to the next.

  allow_compounds(bool)

    When this value is set to True, compound words are accepted
    as legal -- as long as both words are found in the
    dictionary; more than two words are always illegal. When
    this value is set to False, run-together words are
    considered spelling errors.

    The default value of this setting is dictionary-dependent,
    so the caller should set it explicitly if it really matters.

  make_wild_guesses(bool)

    This setting controls when ispell makes "wild" guesses.

    If False, ispell only makes "sane" guesses, i.e. possible
    root/affix combinations that match the current dictionary;
    only if it can find none will it make "wild" guesses, which
    don't match the dictionary, and might in fact be illegal
    words.

    If True, wild guesses are always made, along with any "sane"
    guesses. This feature can be useful if the dictionary has a
    limited word list, or a word list with few suffixes.

    The default value of this setting is dictionary-dependent,
    so the caller should set it explicitly if it really matters.

  use_dictionary([dictionary])

    Specifies what dictionary to use instead of the default.
    Dictionary names are actually file names, and are searched
    for according to the following rule: if the name does not
    contain a slash, it is looked for in the directory
    containing the default dictionary, typically /usr/local/lib.
    Otherwise, it is used as is: if it does not begin with a
    slash, it is construed from the current directory.

    If no argument is given, the default dictionary will be
    used.

  use_personal_dictionary([dictionary])

    Specifies what personal dictionary to use instead of the
    default.

    Dictionary names are actually file names, and are searched
    for according to the following rule: if the name begins with
    a slash, it is used as is (i.e. it is an absolute path
    name). Otherwise, it is construed as relative to the user's
    home directory ($HOME).

    If no argument is given, the default personal dictionary
    will be used.

FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS
    ispell options:

      -w chars
           Specify additional characters that can be part of a word.

DEPENDENCIES
    Lingua::Ispell uses the external program ispell, which is the
    "International Ispell", available at

      http://fmg-www.cs.ucla.edu/geoff/ispell.html

    as well as various archives and mirrors, such as

      ftp://ftp.math.orst.edu/pub/ispell-3.1/

    This is a very popular program, and may already be installed
    on your system.

    Lingua::Ispell also uses the standard perl modules FileHandle,
    IPC::Open2, and Carp.

AUTHOR
    jdporter@min.net (John Porter)

    This module is free software; you may redistribute it and/or
    modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.