[TUHS] Question

[arnold at skeeve.com]

The spelling corrector in the shell rings vague bell. I think
it's in the 8th or 9th edition Bourne shell. You should be able to
find those in the archives.

Geoff Collyer has a modern port of the V9 shell at
http://www.collyer.net/who/geoff/v9sh.tar.

HTH,

Arnold

Ed Bradford <egbegb2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you for responding. My recollection is that one of your
> folks put the spelling corrector into the shell so when I typed
> the wrong letters for a directory or file, the spelling correct
> would help. It was particularly noticible in the "chdir - cd" shell
> command. Do you recall any such person and if so, did he (and it
> was a he) use Peter's work?
>
> There was a distance algorithm that was far better than anything I've seen
> since. Yes, please send me Peter's contact information.
>
> I am
>
> Ed Bradford, Ph.D. Physics, retired from IBM
> Pflugerville,TX
> egbegb2 at gmail.com
>
> PS: We chatted sometime in 1980 or so about
> adding database capabilities to the interactive
> environment. I was interested in adding it to
> the Bourne Shell at the time.
>
> On Sun, Jan 3, 2021 at 2:23 PM M Douglas McIlroy <
> m.douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>
> > > I was a BTL person for 8 years between 1976 and 1984. During
> > > that time there was a spelling corrector that was better than
> > > anything I see today. There was a concept of "spelling distance"
> > > that corrected a whole bunch of stuff that even today cannot be >
> > corrected.
> >
> > > Who in that era worked on spelling correction at BTL. I was at
> > > Columbus BTL (1976-1979) and Whippany BTL (1979-1984).
> >
> > Peter Nelson made an interface to spell(1) that showed putative errors in
> > context. I believe it could suggest corrections. I remember the project; I
> > installed hooks for it in spell(1). I don't remember the date, but it would
> > probably not have been early enough for you to have used it in Columbus.
> >
> > If there's a chance that Peter's program is the one you remember
> > and you'd like to get in touch with him, I can give you his
> > email address.
> >
> > Doug
> >
>
>
> -- 
> Advice is judged by results, not by intentions.
>   Cicero