Spelling Checker

[Kerry Farmer]

I am trying to find a spelling checker to use from within a PB program.

Essentially I want to say "Is word 'xxx' spelled correctly?" and be told yes or no.

In fact, when I think about it, what I really want to know is "Does word 'xxx' exist or not?" Which really amounts to the same thing I suppose.

It is part of developing a word puzzle so it would be nice but not critical if it was quite quick. And again, nice but not critical, if I could choose US or UK spelling. I am only interested in English - at this stage anyway.

The checker would need to have all forms of the word in but should differentiate between plurals and singular forms. I would not want to get a positive response for proper nouns.

And ideally, it would be nice to be able to quote what authority I had for the answers.

Any suggestions on where I should investigate?

Thanks

[Brian Chirgwin]

The checker would need to have all forms of the word in but should differentiate between plurals and singular forms. I would not want to get a positive response for proper nouns.

And ideally, it would be nice to be able to quote what authority I had for the answers.

Any suggestions on where I should investigate?

Thanks

There are some free dictionary files that you can download and roll your own check against one or more of these files.

This site list some free spell checkers.

[Peter Redei]

http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pbforums/showthread.php?t=41308

Peter Redei

[Mel Bishop]

Depending on what word puzzle you are creating, you might want to take CONTEXT into consideration.

Break - Brake
Disc - Disk

Both are spelled correctly if inserted in proper context but not spelled correctly if taken out of context.

http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pbforums/showthread.php?t=30967

[Jeff Blakeney]

I'm pretty sure I downloaded a DLL called PBSpell a long time ago. I can't remember where I got it but it looked to be okay.

The only thing I found doing a google search is some Phoenix forum messages that mention using PBSpell as a sample for how to include you own DECLAREs in a project.

[Gösta H. Lovgren-2]

Kerry,

A while back John G and I worked a "Word Connection" puzzle solver using a file of 100k+ words. It found all possible connections between two words in 10ths of a second. You may find it useful to see how it was done using an ascii hash total for each word.

http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pbforums/showthread.php?t=36427

'
' The files are here:

http://www.SwedesDock.com/powerbasic/Word_Connections.exe

http://www.SwedesDock.com/powerbasic/z_WC_All_Files_Needed.zip

Also have a multi featured utility program I use frequently (several times a day) that checks spelling by checking the word in the clipboard using the same word file. It finds all spelling variations of a word instantly (effectively).

' The files are here:
http://www.SwedesDock.com/powerbasic/Z-Post.exe (note - Spell check and some other routines will not run w/o associated files but you can see format. Click through several error mags until getting to z-post main screen.)

http://www.SwedesDock.com/powerbasic/Z-Post.zip

http://www.SwedesDock.com/powerbasic/Z-Post.bas

(The bas & exe are current but the zip is not but relevant files other than those two are).
======================================
Politics, n.
Interests masquerading as principles.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
======================================

[Tom Hanlin]

I did something much more gruesome for Textris, an old game I wrote that was a combination of Tetris and Scrabble. If I recall correctly, for the dictionary, I used the first 2-3 characters directly as array indices, which made a pointer to the first entry in the matching list. Any following words were checked, one by one, to see if they also matched.

Very crude, but fast enough, and it was sufficient.

There are more than a few versions of Textris out there, these days. Some of them derive from my work, in one way or another... if you like word games, Google.

[Kerry Farmer]

Thank you everybody

Lots to investigate - lots to think about

Great

[Stanley Durham]

the File Range Trie DB is a Key/Value, String/String database
it is capable of finding 100,000 string Keys in 0.01599 seconds
you would have to add the dictionary words
there are dictionary list around

[Brice Manuel]

I did something much more gruesome for Textris, an old game I wrote that was a combination of Tetris and Scrabble.

Slight hijack, but as to Textris...

Textris will always be one of the greatest video games ever developed. Not only is it a addicting game but also can be mind challenging for all ages.