---
name: "langident"
section: "1p"
platform: "linux"
package: "liblingua-identify-perl"
version: "0.56-2"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/langident"
---

# langident(1p)

identifies the language files are written in

## NAME

langident - identifies the language files are written in

## SYNOPSIS

```
  langident [OPTIONS] file1 [file2 ...]
```

## DESCRIPTION

Identifies the language files are written in using Perl module Lingua::Identify.

### OPTIONS

### -a

Show all results (not just the most probable language).

### -c

Show confidence level for most probable language (it will be the first value right after the most probable language).

### -d

Debug (development only).

### -E ENCODING

Select an input encoding. Defaults to UTF-8.

```
  # use ISO-8859-1 (latin1)
  langident -E ISO-8859-1 file
```

### -e METHODS

Select the method(s) to use. There are three ways of doing this:

```
  # simply using a method
  langident -e ngrams3 file
  # using several methods (separate them with a comma)
  langident -e prefixes3,suffixes3
  # using several methods and assign different weights to each of them
  langident -e smallwords=2,prefixes=1,ngrams3=1.3
```

The available methods are the following: **smallwords**, **prefixes1**, **prefixes2**, **prefixes3**, **prefixes4**, **suffixes1**, **suffixes2**, **suffixes3**, **suffixes4**, **ngrams1**, **ngrams2**, **ngrams3** and **ngrams4**.

### -h

Display help message and exit.

### -l

List all available languages and exit.

### -m NUMBER

Set maximum number of results (languages) to display (shows the N most probable languages, by descending order of probability).

Overrides the -a switch.

### -o LANGUAGES

Only work with specified languages.

```
  # identify between Portuguese and English only
  langident -o pt,en *
```

### -p

Also show percentages.

### -s SIZE

Maximum size to examine.

### -v

Show version and exit.

## EXAMPLES

Use methods ngrams2 and ngrams1, assigning the double of importance to ngrams2 (-e switch); output will include the three most probable languages (-m switch) with its percentages (-p switch) and also the confidence level (-c switch) of the first result.

```
  $ langident -e ngrams2=2,ngrams1 -c -p -m 3 README
  README:en 65.7209505939491 7.8971987481393 ga 4.11905889385895 tr 4.08487011400505
  $
```

## TO DO

- •

  Add a switch to ignore HTML tags (and maybe other formats too)

## SEE ALSO

**Lingua::Identify**(3), **Text::ExtractWords**(3), **Text::Ngram**(3), **Text::Affixes**(3).

A linguist and/or a shrink.

The latest CVS version of `"Lingua::Identify"` (which includes *langident*) can be attained at http://natura.di.uminho.pt/natura/viewcvs.cgi/Lingua/Identify/

ISO 639 Language Codes, at http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/iso639.htm

## AUTHOR

Jose Alves de Castro, \<cog@cpan.org\>

## COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2004 by Jose Alves de Castro

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.