---
name: "misspell-fixer"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "misspell-fixer"
version: "0.5-1"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/misspell-fixer"
---

# misspell-fixer(1)

misspell-fixer 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.

## NAME

misspell-fixer - misspell-fixer

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.

### 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 .
  ```

-

  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 -

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!