DICT(1p)

💖 DICT(1p) — pdict, the perl bestie that talks to dictionary servers 💖

User Contributed Perl Documentation ✨ this is the pdict page, and trust, we're gonna make it make sense 🫶

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🌸 NAME 🌸

pdict — a perl client for accessing network dictionary servers. yes bestie, it goes out over the net and asks other computers what words mean 💅

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

pdict [OPTIONS] word

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so, pdict is a client for the Dictionary server protocol (DICT), which is the thing you use to query natural language dictionaries that live on some remote machine. 🍓

When you use it the most simple way possible, like this:

% pdict word

pdict goes looking for definitions of word in the dictionaries hosted at dict.org. And if it finds no definitions? No stress, it pivots — dict will look for words that are similar and list them at you:

% pdict bonana
  no definition for "bonana" - perhaps you meant:
    banana, bonanza, Banana, Bonanza, Bonasa

✨ iconic behaviour honestly. but lowkey important: this feature only works if the remote DICT server supports the soundex or Levenshtein matching strategies. you can find out for yourself using the -stats switch 👑

You can specify the hostname of the DICT server with the -h option:

% pdict -h dict.org dictionary

A DICT server can support a number of databases, and you can use the -d option to pick a particular database. for example, you can look up computer-related terms in the Free On-line Dictionary Of Computing (FOLDOC) like this:

% pdict -h dict.org -d foldoc byte

And to find out what databases (dictionaries) are even available on a server, use the -dbs option:

% pdict -dbs

There are sooo many dictionaries hosted on other servers around the net; a list of some of them can be found at

http://www.dict.org/links.html

🔥 MATCHING 🔥

Instead of requesting word definitions, you can use pdict to request a list of words which match a pattern. 👀 for example, to look for four-letter words starting in 'b' and ending in 'p', you'd use:

% pdict -match -strategy re '^b..p$'

The -match option says you want a list of matching words rather than a definition. The -strategy re says to use POSIX regular expressions when matching the pattern ^b..p$. slay.

Most DICT servers support a bunch of matching strategies; you can get a list of the strategies a server provides with the -strats switch:

% pdict -h dict.org -strats

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -h server, -host server — the hostname for the DICT server. if you don't specify one it defaults to dict.org. 🏠
• -p port, -port port — specify the port for connections (default is 2628, from RFC 2229).
• -d dbname, -database dbname — the name of a specific database (dictionary) to query. 🎯
• -m, -match — look for words which match the pattern (using the specified strategy). 🔍
• -i dbname, -info dbname — request information on the specified database. typically this gives you a couple of pages of text, so, be ready 📖
• -c string, -client string — specify the CLIENT identification string sent to the DICT server.
• -D, -dbs — list the available databases (dictionaries) on the DICT server. 📚
• -s strategy, -strategy strategy — specify a matching strategy. used in combination with -match.
• -S, -strats — list the matching strategies (used in -strategy) that the DICT server supports.
• -I, -serverinfo — request information on the selected DICT server. 🖥️
• -help — display a short help message including command-line options.
• -doc — display the full documentation for pdict.
• -version — display the version of pdict
• -verbose — display verbose information as pdict runs.
• -debug — display debugging information as pdict runs. useful mainly for developers. 🛠️

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💀 KNOWN BUGS AND LIMITATIONS 💀

okay bestie, real talk time — here's what this thing can't do. not me being dramatic, this is just the truth 🙈

• pdict doesn't know how to handle firewalls. 🧱
• The authentication aspects of RFC 2229 aren't currently supported. 🔐
• Display of list results (eg from -strats and -dbs) could be better. ngl, it's giving "fine, not great" 💅
• pdict isn't very smart at handling combinations of options. 😭
• Currently no support for a configuration file - will add one soon. ⏳

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• www.dict.org — the DICT home page, with all sorts of useful information. there are a number of other DICT clients available too. 🫶
• dict — the C dict client written by Rik Faith; the options are pretty much lifted from Rik's client. ✨
• RFC 2229 — the document which defines the DICT network protocol.

http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc2229.html

• Net::Dict — the perl module which implements the client API for RFC 2229. 🧚

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⭐ VERSION ⭐

$Revision: 1.2 $

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Neil Bowers <neil@bowers.com> 💌

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🎀 COPYRIGHT 🎀

Copyright (C) 2002 Neil Bowers. All rights reserved.

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

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this was rendered from perl v5.36.0, dated 2022-10-15, living in section DICT(1p) — go forth and look up words responsibly 💖✨🦋