References:
https://cspell.org
https://github.com/streetsidesoftware/cspell
`

Command: check - Quick Visual Check

Do a quick visual check of a file. This is a great way to see which text is included in the check.

`sh
cspell check
`

It will produce something like this:
!image

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To get color in less, use --color and less -r

`sh
cspell check --color | less -r
`

Command: trace - See which dictionaries contain a word

Trace shows a the list of known dictionaries and a * next to the ones that contain the word.

A ! will appear next to the ones where the word is forbidden.

!image

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`
Usage: cspell trace [options] [words...]

Trace words -- Search for words in the configuration and dictionaries.

Options:
-c, --config Configuration file to use. By default cspell
looks for cspell.json in the current directory.
--locale Set language locales. i.e. "en,fr" for English and
French, or "en-GB" for British English.
--language-id Use programming language. i.e. "php" or "scala".
--allow-compound-words Turn on allowCompoundWords
--no-allow-compound-words Turn off allowCompoundWords
--ignore-case Ignore case and accents when searching for words.
--no-ignore-case Do not ignore case and accents when searching for
words.
--dictionary Enable a dictionary by name. Can be used multiple
times.
--no-dictionary Disable a dictionary by name. Can be used multiple
times.
--dictionary-path Configure how to display the dictionary path.
(choices: "hide", "short", "long", "full",
default: Display most of the path.)
--stdin Read words from stdin.
--all Show all dictionaries.
--only-found Show only dictionaries that have the words.
--color Force color.
--no-color Turn off color.
--no-default-configuration Do not load the default configuration and
dictionaries.
-h, --help display help for command
`

CI/CD Continuous Integration support

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Mega-Linter aggregates 70 linters ready to use out of the box, including cspell

- Can run as a GitHub Action, on other CI tools and locally
- Provides an updated .cspell.json file with new unknown words

Setup

Quick setup following installation guide in Mega-Linter documentation

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#### pre-commit

Setup

`
npm install -SD cspell
`

.git/hooks/pre-commit

`
#!/bin/sh

exec git diff --cached --name-only | npx cspell --no-summary --no-progress --no-must-find-files --file-list stdin
`

Requirements

CSpell needs Node 18 and above.

How it works

The concept is simple, split camelCase and snake_case words before checking them against a list of known words.

- camelCase -> camel case
- HTMLInput -> html input
- srcCode -> src code
- snake_case_words -> snake case words
- camel2snake -> camel snake -- (the 2 is ignored)
- function parseJson(text: string) -> function parse json text string

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- Escape characters like \n, \t are removed if the word does not match:
- \narrow -> narrow - because narrow is a word
- \ncode -> code - because ncode is not a word.
- \network -> network - but it might be hiding a spelling error, if \n was an escape character.

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- This spellchecker is case insensitive. It will not catch errors like english which should be English.
- The spellchecker uses dictionaries stored locally. It does not send anything outside your machine.
- The words in the dictionaries can and do contain errors.
- There are missing words.
- Only words longer than 3 characters are checked. "jsj" is ok, while "jsja" is not.
- All symbols and punctuation are ignored.

In Document Settings

It is possible to add spell check settings into your source code.
This is to help with file specific issues that may not be applicable to the entire project.

All settings are prefixed with cspell: or spell-checker:.

- disable -- turn off the spell checker for a section of code.
- enable -- turn the spell checker back on after it has been turned off.
- ignore -- specify a list of words to be ignored.
- words -- specify a list of words to be considered correct and will appear in the suggestions list.
- ignoreRegExp -- Any text matching the regular expression will NOT be checked for spelling.
- includeRegExp -- Only text matching the collection of includeRegExp will be checked.
- enableCompoundWords / disableCompoundWords -- Allow / disallow words like: "stringlength".
- dictionaries -- specify a list of the names of the dictionaries to use.

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It is possible to disable / enable the spell checker by adding comments to your code.

#### Disable Checking

- / cspell:disable /
- / spell-checker: disable /
- / spellchecker: disable /
- // cspell:disable-line -- disables checking for the current line.
- / cspell:disable-next-line / -- disables checking till the end of the next line.

#### Enable Checking

- / cspell:enable /
- / spell-checker: enable /
- / spellchecker: enable /

#### Example

`javascript
// cspell:disable
const wackyWord = ['zaallano', 'wooorrdd', 'zzooommmmmmmm'];
/ cspell:enable /

const words = ['zaallano', 'wooorrdd', 'zzooommmmmmmm']; // cspell:disable-line disables this entire line

// To disable the next line, use cspell:disable-next-line
const moreWords = ['ieeees', 'beees', 'treeees'];

// Nesting disable / enable is not Supported

// spell-checker:disable
// It is now disabled.

var liep = 1;

/ cspell:disable /
// It is still disabled

// cspell:enable
// It is now enabled

const str = 'goededag'; // <- will be flagged as an error.

// spell-checker:enable <- doesn't do anything

// cSPELL:DISABLE <-- also works.

// if there isn't an enable, spelling is disabled till the end of the file.
const str = 'goedemorgen'; // <- will NOT be flagged as an error.
`

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_Ignore_ allows you to specify a list of words you want to ignore within the document.

`javascript
// cspell:ignore zaallano, wooorrdd
// cspell:ignore zzooommmmmmmm
const wackyWord = ['zaallano', 'wooorrdd', 'zzooommmmmmmm'];
`

Note: words defined with ignore will be ignored for the entire file.

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The _words_ list allows you to add words that will be considered correct and will be used as suggestions.

`javascript
// cspell:words woorxs sweeetbeat
const companyName = 'woorxs sweeetbeat';
`

Note: words defined with words will be used for the entire file.

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In some programming language it is common to glue words together.

`c
// cspell:enableCompoundWords
char * errormessage; // Is ok with cspell:enableCompoundWords
int errornumber; // Is also ok.
`

Note: Compound word checking cannot be turned on / off in the same file.
The last setting in the file determines the value for the entire file.

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By default, the entire document is checked for spelling.
cspell:disable/cspell:enable above allows you to block off sections of the document.
ignoreRegExp and includeRegExp give you the ability to ignore or include patterns of text.
By default the flags gim are added if no flags are given.

The spell checker works in the following way:

1. Find all text matching includeRegExp
1. Remove any text matching ignoreRegExp
1. Check the remaining text.

#### Exclude Example

`javascript
// cspell:ignoreRegExp 0x[0-9a-f]+ -- will ignore c style hex numbers
// cspell:ignoreRegExp /0x[0-9A-F]+/g -- will ignore upper case c style hex numbers.
// cspell:ignoreRegExp g{5} h{5} -- will only match ggggg, but not hhhhh or 'ggggg hhhhh'
// cspell:ignoreRegExp g{5}|h{5} -- will match both ggggg and hhhhh
// cspell:ignoreRegExp /g{5} h{5}/ -- will match 'ggggg hhhhh'
/ cspell:ignoreRegExp /n{5}/ -- will NOT work as expected because of the ending comment -> /
/*
cspell:ignoreRegExp /q{5}/ -- will match qqqqq just fine but NOT QQQQQ
*/
// cspell:ignoreRegExp /[^\s]{40,}/ -- will ignore long strings with no spaces.
// cspell:ignoreRegExp Email -- this will ignore email like patterns -- see Predefined RegExp expressions
var encodedImage = 'HR+cPzr7XGAOJNurPL0G8I2kU0UhKcqFssoKvFTR7z0T3VJfK37vS025uKroHfJ9nA6WWbHZ/ASn...';
var email1 = 'emailaddress@myfancynewcompany.com';
var email2 = '';
`

Note: ignoreRegExp and includeRegExp are applied to the entire file. They do not start and stop.

#### Include Example

In general you should not need to use includeRegExp. But if you are mixing languages then it could come in helpful.

`Python


cspell:includeRegExp #.*

`javascript
// cspell:dictionaries lorem-ipsum
const companyName = 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet';
`

Note: dictionaries specified with dictionaries will be used for the entire file.

Predefined RegExp expressions

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- Urls1 -- Matches urls
- HexValues -- Matches common hex format like #aaa, 0xfeef, \u0134
- Base641 -- matches base64 blocks of text longer than 40 characters.
- Email -- matches most email addresses.

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- Everything1 -- By default we match an entire document and remove the excludes.
- string -- This matches common string formats like '...', "...", and \...\
- CStyleComment -- These are C Style comments /\ \/ and //
- PhpHereDoc -- This matches PHPHereDoc strings.

1. These patterns are part of the default include/exclude list for every file.

Customization

_cspell_'s behavior can be controlled through a config file. By default it looks for any of the following files:

- .cspell.json
- cspell.json
- .cSpell.json
- cSpell.json
- cspell.config.js
- cspell.config.cjs
- cspell.config.mjs
- cspell.config.ts
- cspell.config.cts
- cspell.config.mts
- cspell.config.json
- cspell.config.yaml
- cspell.config.yml
- cspell.config.toml
- cspell.yaml
- cspell.yml

Or you can specify a path to a config file with the --config argument on the command line.

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#### Example cspell.json file

`jsonc
// cSpell Settings
{
// Version of the setting file. Always 0.2
"version": "0.2",
// language - current active spelling language
"language": "en",
// words - list of words to be always considered correct
"words": ["mkdirp", "tsmerge", "githubusercontent", "streetsidesoftware", "vsmarketplacebadge", "visualstudio"],
// flagWords - list of words to be always considered incorrect
// This is useful for offensive words and common spelling errors.
// For example "hte" should be "the"
"flagWords": ["hte"]
}
`

#### Example cspell.config.mjs file

`js
// @ts-check

import { defineConfig } from 'cspell';

export default defineConfig({
words: ['mycompany']
});
`

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- version - currently always 0.2 - controls how the settings in the configuration file behave.

- language - this specifies the language locale to use in choosing the general dictionary.
For example: "language": "en-GB" tells cspell to use British English instead of US English.

- words - a list of words to be considered correct.

- flagWords - a list of words to be always considered incorrect

- ignoreWords - a list of words to be ignored (even if they are in the flagWords).

- ignorePaths - a list of globs to specify which files are to be ignored.

Example

`json
"ignorePaths": ["node_modules/**"]
`

will cause cspell to ignore anything in the node_modules directory.

- maxNumberOfProblems - defaults to _100_ per file.

- minWordLength - defaults to _4_ - the minimum length of a word before it is checked.

- allowCompoundWords - defaults to _false_; set to true to allow compound words by default.

- dictionaries - list of the names of the dictionaries to use. See Dictionaries below.

- dictionaryDefinitions - this list defines any custom dictionaries to use. This is how you can include other languages like Spanish.

Example

`javascript
"language": "en",
// Dictionaries "spanish", "ruby", and "corp-term" will always be checked.
// Including "spanish" in the list of dictionaries means both Spanish and English
// words will be considered correct.
"dictionaries": ["spanish", "ruby", "corp-terms", "fonts"],
// Define each dictionary. Relative paths are relative to the config file.
"dictionaryDefinitions": [
{ "name": "spanish", "path": "./spanish-words.txt"},
{ "name": "ruby", "path": "./ruby.txt"},
{ "name": "company-terms", "path": "./corp-terms.txt"}
],
`

- ignoreRegExpList - list of patterns to be ignored

- includeRegExpList - _(Advanced)_ limits the text checked to be only that matching the expressions in the list.

- patterns - this allows you to define named patterns to be used with
ignoreRegExpList and includeRegExpList.

- languageSettings - this allow for per programming language configuration settings. See LanguageSettings

- overrides - this allows for settings to be based upon the file name or path. It is useful for setting the language for localization.

Dictionaries

The spell checker includes a set of default dictionaries.

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- en_US - Derived from Hunspell US English words.
- en-gb - Derived from Hunspell GB English words.
- companies - List of well known companies
- softwareTerms - Software Terms and concepts like "coroutine", "debounce", "tree", etc.
- misc - Terms that do not belong in the other dictionaries.

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- typescript - keywords for TypeScript and JavaScript
- node - terms related to using nodejs.
- php - _php_ keywords and library methods
- go - _go_ keywords and library methods
- python - _python_ keywords
- powershell - _powershell_ keywords
- html - _html_ related keywords
- css - _css_, _less_, and _scss_ related keywords
- cpp - _C++_ related keywords
- csharp - _C#_ related keywords
- latex - LaTex related words
- bash - Bash/shell script keywords

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- fonts - long list of fonts - to assist with _css_
- filetypes - list of file types
- npm - list of top 500+ package names on npm.

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- name - The reference name of the dictionary, used with program language settings
- description - Optional description
- path - Path to the file, can be relative or absolute. Relative path is relative to the
current cspell.json file.
- repMap - Optional replacement map use to replace character prior to searching the dictionary.
Example:
`javascript
// Replace various tick marks with a single '
"repMap": [["'||’", "'"]]
``
// Use Compounds
- useCompounds - allow compound words

`javascript
// Define each dictionary. Relative paths are relative to the config file.
"dictionaryDefinitions": [
{ "name": "spanish", "path": "./spanish-words.txt"},
{ "name": "ruby", "path": "./ruby.txt"},
{ "name": "company-terms", "path": "./corp-terms.txt"}
],
`

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It is possible to prevent a dictionary from being loaded. This is useful if you want to use your own dictionary or just
turn off an existing dictionary.

#### Disable Default cpp Dictionary

`javascript
"dictionaries": ["!cpp"],
"overrides": [
{
"filename": "legacy/*/.cpp",
"dictionaries": ["!!cpp"], // add it back for *.cpp files under the legacy folder
},
]
`

The number of !s is important.

- !cpp remove cpp dictionary
- !!cpp add it back
- !!!cpp remove it again.

LanguageSettings

The Language Settings allow configuration to be based upon the programming language and/or the locale.
There are two selector fields locale and languageId.

- languageId defines which programming languages to match against.
A value of "python,javascript" will match against _python_ and _javascript_ files. To match against ALL programming languages,
use "*".
- locale defines which spoken languages to match against. A value of "en-GB,nl" will match against British English or Dutch.
A value of "*" will match all spoken languages.
- Most configuration values allowed in a cspell.json file can be define or redefine within the languageSettings.

`javascript
"languageSettings": [
{
// VSCode languageId. i.e. typescript, java, go, cpp, javascript, markdown, latex
// * will match against any file type.
"languageId": "c,cpp",
// Language locale. i.e. en-US, de-AT, or ru. * will match all locales.
// Multiple locales can be specified like: "en, en-US" to match both English and English US.
"locale": "*",
// To exclude patterns, add them to "ignoreRegExpList"
"ignoreRegExpList": [
"/#include.*/"
],
// List of dictionaries to enable by name in dictionaryDefinitions
"dictionaries": ["cpp"],
// Dictionary definitions can also be supplied here. They are only used iff "languageId" and "locale" match.
"dictionaryDefinitions": []
}
]
`

Overrides

Overrides are useful for forcing configuration on a per file basis.

Example:

`javascript
"overrides": [
// Force .hrr and .crr files to be treated as cpp files:
{
"filename": "*/{.hrr,*.crr}",
"languageId": "cpp"
},
// Force *.txt to use the Dutch dictionary (Dutch dictionary needs to be installed separately):
{
"language": "nl",
"filename": "/dutch//*.txt"
}
]
``

---

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