Use the command ispell <filename> to run an interactive spelling checker on a file. You can also use ispell from inside the mailer mutt with the i option before sending an email.
The command spell is a non-interactive spelling checker. It just prints out all misspelled words from the input file of words. Hence if if you check a file with and there is not output, then no spelling mistakes were found in the given file. No news is good news.
Both spell and ispell use a dictionary that is located in the file /usr/share/dict/words. Here is an example using spell.
[amit@onyx simple]: cat test1 dada dad mom father sun simpel [amit@onyx simple]: spell test1 dada simpel [amit@onyx simple]:
The spell program by itself is not very useful. However it is useful if used from inside shell scripts. More about shell scripts in Section 4.7.1