gbergman@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (01/05/85)
Description: The program spell is inconsistent as to whether it accepts or rejects (i.e. outputs as a misspelling) the form "dishes". Similar forms, correct and incorrect, such as "wishes, fishes, wishs, fishs, dishs" are consistently accepted as correct. Repeat-by: (The behavior on the machines I am on is so inconsistent I am not confident in saying that it "will do" anything, but I'll pretend I am.) (1) Give spell the input "xxx dishes" one or more times -- i.e. do % spell xxx dishes ^D Almost every time, both the string "xxx" and the word "dishes" will be output as misspellings. (2) Give spell the input "dishes" alone several times. Roughly half the time it will be output as a misspelling and half the time accepted as correct. (3) Give spell an input in which "dishes" is included along with random correctly spelled words. Same result as (2). (4) Give spell input containing "wishes", "fishes", "wishs", "fishs", "dishs" "watchs". None of them will be output as errors. Discussion re fix for (1-3): Probably, adding "dishes" to /usr/dict/spell would fix this, but really someone should figure out why it's happening! Could spell be indeterministic as to whether it dissects the word as dish+es or di+shes, and could the fact that "shes" is (presumably) in the stoplist be relevant? Remarks re (4): The procedure for dealing with suffixes -(e)s and -ed seems to be extremely simpleminded, and except for this case, very generous in what it will accept. E.g. dishededededs is accepted as correct! It ought to be taught that "s" can't be added to words ending in -sh or -ch, and that only one -ed can be added to a word. George Bergman Math, UC Berkeley 94720 USA ...!ucbvax!gbergman%cartan.Berkeley