OpenEuphoria

Spell checker

• Posted by "Wallace B. Riley" <wryly at MINDSPRING.COM> Apr 01, 1998
• 699 views

Hello everyone, especially Bob Pilkington -

I have no interest, zero, zilch, in a spell checker in Euphoria or any other
language.  I already have two or three, that came with a word processor and
other packages, and I almost never use them.

Reason: I don't mean to brag, but I'm a pretty good speller already.  If I
have a problem, it's in careless typing; if an error sneaks in, I can
usually spot it right away and fix it.  (My tongue-in-cheek inquiry a week
or two ago asking how bad spellers can be good programmers was a result of
this.  The same example that I cited in that inquiry -- MARCO for MACRO --
appeared a few days later in another inquiry in this very Listserv.)

But the main reason for my lack of interest is that no spell checker
anywhere, in any programming language or any written language, can get
around vagaries in its language's syntax.  Example: "Some people just don't
know when there well off" has a blatant error, but no spell checker will
pick it up.  Or "Fore score and seven years ago are fathers brought fourth a
gnu nation, conceived..."  That's not even a complete sentence, but it has
four mistakes in it.  All of these errors involve words that are spelled
correctly but are syntactically incorrect -- or should I say semantically
incorrect?

Thanks, Bob, a noble effort, but lacking what all other spell checkers lack. 

(Of course, if someone could get around the natual language problem, this
difficulty might solve itself.  Rots o' ruck!)

Wally Riley
wryly at mindspring.com