4 Jan
2021
4 Jan
'21
3:07 p.m.
That was done by Tom Duff, I believe before he came to Bell Labs. I might
have brought the idea with me from Toronto. The code, or at least a simple
version of it, is in The Unix Programming Environment starting around page
208. We credit Tom in the endnotes for the chapter.
-rob
On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 8:00 PM Ed Bradford <egbegb2(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you for responding. My recollection is that one
of your
folks put the spelling corrector into the shell so when I typed
the wrong letters for a directory or file, the spelling correct
would help. It was particularly noticible in the "chdir - cd" shell
command. Do you recall any such person and if so, did he (and it
was a he) use Peter's work?
There was a distance algorithm that was far better than anything I've seen
since. Yes, please send me Peter's contact information.
I am
Ed Bradford, Ph.D. Physics, retired from IBM
Pflugerville,TX
egbegb2(a)gmail.com
PS: We chatted sometime in 1980 or so about
adding database capabilities to the interactive
environment. I was interested in adding it to
the Bourne Shell at the time.
On Sun, Jan 3, 2021 at 2:23 PM M Douglas McIlroy <
m.douglas.mcilroy(a)dartmouth.edu> wrote:
--
Advice is judged by results, not by intentions.
Cicero
I was a
BTL person for 8 years between 1976 and 1984. During
that time there was a spelling corrector that was better than
anything I see today. There was a concept of "spelling distance"
that corrected a whole bunch of stuff that even today cannot be >
corrected.
Who in that era worked on spelling correction at
BTL. I was at
Columbus BTL (1976-1979) and Whippany BTL (1979-1984).
Peter Nelson made an interface to spell(1) that showed putative errors in
context. I believe it could suggest corrections. I remember the project; I
installed hooks for it in spell(1). I don't remember the date, but it would
probably not have been early enough for you to have used it in Columbus.
If there's a chance that Peter's program is the one you remember
and you'd like to get in touch with him, I can give you his
email address.
Doug