[Tutor] spell/grammar checking

[Alan Gauld]

> bit, I will offer my opinion.  More than likely, at one time,
someone or a
> group of someones sat down and actually coded in most of the words
in the
> english (and other) languages into some kind of database

The Unix dictionary - which is a text file called 'words' I
believe! - was indeed coded by someone but very cleverly because
the RAM at the time was only 48K and the initial dictionary
was bigger than this! Some very clever code was needed to only
store root words and a set of standard extensins. Jon Bentley
discusses it in his book Progreamming Pearls... recommended
reading to all.

> but as far as getting your own dictionary on your hard drive for a
python
> script to access....Im still not quite sure how to do this...

On unix the words file is still there and I believe may now be
extended
by a user dictionary stored somewhere else. By accessing both of these
you mauy be able to do something. Most word processors also do the
same,
Adobe FrameMaker DTP program for example, uses a plain text word list
for its User added words

Try "man spell" on a Unix box...

> > .... Do programmers sit down and
> > actually write huge dictionary files,

Yes but only once. Recall from my book that one characteristic of
a good programmer is lazinesss - don't do a thing twice! :-)

Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web tutor
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld