README.md
# Misspell Fixer
[](https://travis-ci.org/vlajos/misspell-fixer)
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[](https://codeclimate.com/github/vlajos/misspell-fixer)
[](https://isitmaintained.com/project/vlajos/misspell-fixer "Average time to resolve an issue")
[](https://isitmaintained.com/project/vlajos/misspell-fixer "Percentage of issues still open")
Utility to fix common misspellings, typos in source code. There are lots of typical misspellings in program code.
Typically they are more eye-catching in the living code but they can easily hide in comments, examples, samples, notes and documentation.
With this utility you can fix a large number of them very quickly.
Be aware that the utility does not check or fix file names. It could easily happen that a misspelled word is fixed in a file name in a program's code, but
the file itself will not be renamed by this utility.
It is also important to be very careful when fixing public APIs!
A manual review is always needed to verify that nothing has been broken.
[Jump to docker notes](#with-docker)
### Synopsis
misspell-fixer [OPTION] target[s]
### Options, Arguments
`target[s]` can be any file[s] or directory/ies.
Main options:
* `-r` Real run mode: Overwrites the original files with the fixed one. Without this option the originals will be untouched.
* `-n` Disable backups. (By default the modified files' originals will be saved with the `.$$.BAK` suffix.)
* `-P n` Enable processing on `n` forks. For example: `-P 4` processes the files in 4 threads. (`-s` option is not supported)
* `-f` Fast mode. (Equivalent with `-P4`)
* `-h` Help.
Performance note: `-s`, `-v` or the lack of `-n` or `-r` use a slower processing internal loop. So usually `-frn` without `-s` and `-v` are the highest performing
combination.
Output control options:
* `-s` Shows diffs of changes.
* `-v` Verbose mode: shows the iterated files. (Without the prefiltering step)
* `-o` Verbose mode: shows progress (prints a dot for each file scanned, a comma for each file fix iteration/file.)
* `-d` Debug mode: shows all steps of the core logic.
By default only a subset of rules is enabled (around 100). You can enable more rules with the following options:
* `-u` Enable less safe rules. (Manual review's importance is more significant...) (Around ten rules.)
* `-g` Enable rules to convert British English to US English. (These rules aren't exactly typos but sometimes they can be useful.) (Around ten rules.)
* `-R` Enable rare rules. (Few hundred rules.)
* `-V` Enable very rare rules. (Mostly from the wikipedia article.) (More than four thousand rules.)
* `-D` Enable rules based on lintian.debian.org ( git:ebac9a7, ~2300 )
The processing speed decreases as you activate more rules. But with newer greps this is much less significant.
File filtering options:
* `-G` Respect `.gitignore` files. (Requires executable `git` command.) (experimental)
* `-N` Enable file name filtering. For example: `-N '*.cpp' -N '*.h'`
* `-i` Walk through source code management system's internal directories. (do not ignore `.git`, `.svn`, `.hg`, `CVS`)
* `-b` Process binary, generated files. (do not ignore `*.gif`, `*.jpg`, `*.jpeg`, `*.png`, `*.zip`, `*.svg`, `*.tiff`, `*.gz`, `*.bz2`, `*.xz`, `*.rar`, `*.po`, `*.pdf`, `*.woff`, `yarn.lock`, `package-lock.json`, `composer.lock`, `*.mo`, `*.mov`, `*.mp4`, `*.jar`)
* `-m` Disable file size checks. Default is to ignore files > 1MB. (usually csv, compressed JS, ..)
Whitelisting files/entries:
Misspell-fixer automatically ignores the issues matching to the patterns listed in `.misspell-fixer.ignore` or `.github/.misspell-fixer.ignore`.
The format of this file follows the prefiltering's temporary result format:
`^filename:line number:matched word`
* `-W` can be used to append the found issues instead of fixing them based on the other settings.
* `-w filename` can be used to override the ignore file's name.
The ignore file is interpreted as a `grep` exclusion list.
It is applied after the prefiltering step as a set of grep expressions.
So it is possible to exclude any prefixes or more specifically whole files with keeping only their file names:
`^filename`
Or a directory:
`^directory`
The entries are listed/matched with the paths based on the current invocation. Reaching the same target with a different path from
the same working directory will not apply the whitelisted entries generated from the other invocation.
In directory `x` the whitelist entries generated with target `.` will not be applied for target `../x`, although they are the same.
There is a workaround for this with manually editing the whitelist to your needs.
(Patches are welcome...)
### Return values
Generally, the script tries to return with `0` if there were no typos or errors found/fixed.
* `0` No typos found,
* `1-5` Typos found. The return value shows the number of iterations executed.
* `10` Help successfully printed.
* `11` Whitelist successfully saved.
* `100-` Parameter errors. (invalid, missing, conflicting)
### Sample usage
Without arguments, the script will not change anything and its output is minimal.
Its return value can be used to detect whether it found any typos or not.
$ misspell-fixer target
Fixing the files with displaying each fixed file:
$ misspell-fixer -rv target
Showing only the diffs without modifying the originals:
$ misspell-fixer -sv target
Showing the diffs with progress and fixing the found typos:
$ misspell-fixer -rsv target
Fast mode example, no backups: (highest performance)
$ misspell-fixer -frn target
The previous with all rules enabled:
$ misspell-fixer -frunRVD target
It is based on the following sources for common misspellings:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonly_misspelled_words
* https://github.com/neleai/stylepp
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lists_of_common_misspellings/For_machines
* https://anonscm.debian.org/git/lintian/lintian.git/tree/data/spelling/corrections
* http://www.how-do-you-spell.com/
* http://www.wrongspelled.com/
### With Docker
In some environments the dependencies may cause some trouble. (Mac, Windows, older linux versions.)
In this case, you can use misspell-fixer as a docker container image.
Pull the latest version:
$ docker pull vlajos/misspell-fixer
And fix `targetdir`'s content:
$ docker run -ti --rm -v targetdir:/work vlajos/misspell-fixer -frunRVD .
#### Some other different use cases, examples:
General execution directly with docker:
$ docker run -ti --rm -v targetdir:/work vlajos/misspell-fixer [arguments]
`targetdir` becomes the current working directory in the container, so you can reference it as `.` in the arguments list.
You can also use the `dockered-fixer` wrapper from the source repository:
$ dockered-fixer [arguments]
In case your shell supports functions, you can define a function to make the command a little shorter:
$ function misspell-fixer { docker run -ti --rm -v $(pwd):/work vlajos/misspell-fixer "$@"; }
And fixing with the function:
$ misspell-fixer [arguments]
Through the wrapper and the function, it can access only the folders below the current working directory
as it is the only one passed to the container as a volume.
You can build the container locally, although this should not be really needed:
$ docker build . -t misspell-fixer
### With GitHub Actions
There's a [GitHub Action](https://github.com/sobolevn/misspell-fixer-action) to run `misspell-fixer` as well.
It can even send PRs automatically with the fixes.
### Dependencies - "On the shoulders of giants"
The script itself is just a misspelling database and some glue in `bash` between `grep` and `sed`.
`grep`'s `-F` combined with `sed`'s line targeting makes the script quite efficient.
`-F` enables parallel pattern matching with the [Aho–Corasick algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aho%E2%80%93Corasick_algorithm) .
Unfortunately only the newer (2.28+) versions of grep supports `-w` properly.
A little more comprehensive list:
* bash
* find
* sed
* grep
* diff
* sort
* tee
* cut
* rm, cp, mv
* xargs
* git (for respecting .gitignore files)
* ugrep (for significant speed up, optional)
### Authors
* Veres Lajos
* ka7
### Original source
https://github.com/vlajos/misspell-fixer
Feel free to use it!