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<h3 class="section">3.1 Spellchecking Individual Files</h3>
<p>To use Aspell to spellcheck a file use:
<pre class="example"> aspell check [<var>options</var>] <var>filename</var>
</pre>
<p class="noindent">at the command line where <var>filename</var> is the file you want to
check and <var>options</var> is any number of optional options. Some of
the more useful ones include:
<dl>
<dt><b>–mode=</b><var>mode</var><dd>the mode to use when checking files. The available modes are
<code>none</code>, <code>url</code>, <code>email</code>, <code>sgml</code>, <code>tex</code>,
<code>texinfo</code>, <code>nroff</code>, among others. For more information on the
various modes see <a href="Notes-on-Various-Filters-and-Filter-Modes.html#Notes-on-Various-Filters-and-Filter-Modes">Notes on Various Filters and Filter Modes</a>.
<br><dt><b>–dont-backup</b><dd>don't create a backup file. Normally, if there are any corrections
the Aspell utility will append <samp><span class="file">.bak</span></samp> to the existing file name
and then create a new file with corrections made during spell checking.
<br><dt><b>–sug-mode=</b><var>mode</var><dd>the suggestion mode to use where mode is one of <code>ultra</code>,
<code>fast</code>, <code>normal</code>, or <code>bad-spellers</code>. For more
information on these modes see <a href="Notes-on-the-Different-Suggestion-Modes.html#Notes-on-the-Different-Suggestion-Modes">Notes on the Different Suggestion Modes</a>.
<br><dt><b>–lang=</b><var>name</var><b>/-l </b><var>name</var><dd>the language the document is written in. The default depends on the
current locale.
<br><dt><b>–encoding=</b><var>name</var><dd>encoding the document is expected to be in. The default depends on the
current locale.
<br><dt><b>–master=</b><var>name</var><b>/-d </b><var>name</var><dd>the main dictionary to use.
<br><dt><b>–keymapping=</b><var>name</var><dd>the keymapping to use. Either <samp><span class="option">aspell</span></samp> for the default mapping
or <samp><span class="option">ispell</span></samp> to use the same mapping that the Ispell utility
uses.
</dl>
<p>For more information on the available options, please see
<a href="Customizing-Aspell.html#Customizing-Aspell">Customizing Aspell</a>.
<p>For example to check the file <samp><span class="file">foo.txt</span></samp>:
<pre class="example"> aspell check foo.txt
</pre>
<p class="noindent">and to check the file <samp><span class="file">foo.txt</span></samp> using the <samp><span class="option">bad-spellers</span></samp>
suggestion mode and the American English dictionary:
<pre class="example"> aspell check --sug-mode=bad-spellers -d en_US foo.txt
</pre>
<p>If the <samp><span class="option">mode</span></samp> option is not given, then Aspell will use the
extension of the file to determine the current mode. If the extension
is <samp><span class="file">.tex</span></samp>, then <samp><span class="option">tex</span></samp> mode will be used, if the extension
is <samp><span class="file">.html</span></samp>, <samp><span class="file">.htm</span></samp>, <samp><span class="file">.php</span></samp>, or <samp><span class="file">.sgml</span></samp> it will
check the file in <samp><span class="option">sgml</span></samp> mode, otherwise it will use
<samp><span class="option">url</span></samp> mode.
<p>For more information on the various modes that can be used, see
<a href="Notes-on-Various-Filters-and-Filter-Modes.html#Notes-on-Various-Filters-and-Filter-Modes">Notes on Various Filters and Filter Modes</a>.
<p>If Aspell was compiled with curses support and the <samp><span class="env">TERM</span></samp>
environment variable is set to a capable terminal type then Aspell
will use a nice full screen interface, otherwise it will use a
simpler “dumb” terminal interface where the misspelled word is
surrounded by two '*'. In either case the interface should be self
explanatory.
<p>If Aspell is compiled with a version of the curses library that support
wide characters then Aspell can also check UTF-8 text. Furthermore, the
document will be displayed in the encoding defined by the current
locale. This encoding does not necessarily have to be the same encoding
that the document is in. This means that is is possible to check an
8-bit encoding such as ISO-8859-1 on an UTF-8 terminal. To do so
simply set the <samp><span class="option">encoding</span></samp> option to `<samp><span class="samp">iso-8859-1</span></samp>'.
Furthermore it is also possible to check an UTF-8 document on an 8-bit
terminal provided that the document can be successfully converted into
that encoding.
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