Spell-check engine?

[Jeremy Yallop]

* Michele Simionato
| I take the occasion for a simple question about ispell/aspell.
:
| $ echo "hello worldd" | ispell -a
:
| @(#) International Ispell Version 3.1.20 (but really Aspell .33.7
| alpha)
| *
| & worldd 17 6: world, worlds, wold, whorled, would, wooled, wield,
| world's, weld, wild, whirled, wolds, worded, Wilda, Wilde, wiled, word
:
| But what is the meaning of the first number, 17 in this case ?

Did you consider reading the manpage?

   ISPELL(1)

   The -a option is intended to be used from other programs through a
   pipe. 

   [...]

   If the word is not in the dictionary, but there are near misses,
   then the line contains an '&', a space, the misspelled word, a
   space, the number of near misses, the number of characters between
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   the beginning of the line and the beginning of the misspelled word,
   a colon, another space, and a list of the near misses separated by
   commas and spaces.

Jeremy.