british-english-insane(5)

💖 british-english-insane(5) 💖

okay so bestie, this is a section 5 page from the Users' Manual — that's the "miscellaneous file formats" girlies — and it's all about one specific word list. buckle up 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

british-english-insane — it's literally just a list of English words. that's the whole vibe. no cap. 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so /usr/share/dict/british-english-insane is an ASCII file 🦋 and inside it there's an alphabetic list of words, one per line. that's it. that's the file. she's simple, she's iconic, she ate. ✨

like… literally one word per line, in alphabetical order. it's giving "dictionary but make it a text file". 👑

🎀 FILES 🎀

okay this is the part where it gets a little more involved, stay with me 🫶

• there may be any number of word lists hanging out in /usr/share/dict/. it's a whole squad over there, no gatekeeping.
• /etc/dictionaries-common/words is a symbolic link that points at whichever /usr/share/dict/<language> file is the currently-chosen one. she's the plug, she redirects you to the right girlie. 🔗
• /usr/share/dict/words is a symbolic link to /etc/dictionaries-common/words — so yeah, it's a link to a link, chain of command fr fr 💅 — and this is the name that other software should refer to the system word list by. so if you're writing software, bestie, that's the path you use. periodt.
• if you want more info, or you wanna change which word list is currently chosen, go read select-default-wordlist(8). she handles all of that. 👑
• also! the directory /usr/share/dict can contain word lists for many languages, and the name of the language is written in English. for example, /usr/share/dict/french and /usr/share/dict/danish contain, respectively, lists of French and Danish words — if they exist, so like, no promises, check first 🙈.
• and those kinds of lists should be coded using the ISO 8859-1 character set encoding. that's the spec, don't fight it. ⭐

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

go off, read these next:

• ispell(1)
• select-default-wordlist(8)
• and the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard 📚

🦋 HISTORY 🦋

storytime, sit down 🍓

the word lists are not specific, meaning they may be generated from any number of sources. it's a collab, it's a group project, everyone contributed. 💀

and here's the lore: the system word list used to be at /usr/dict/words. old school. vintage. for compatibility, software should check that location if /usr/share/dict/words does not exist. so like, check the new spot first, then fall back to the old one. iykyk. 🔥

👑 AUTHOR 👑

word lists are collected and maintained by various authors — it's a whole committee, a whole friend group, we love a collaborative effort 🫶

the Debian English word lists are built from the SCOWL (Spell-Checker Oriented Word Lists) package, whose upstream editor is Kevin Atkinson <kevina@users.sourceforge.net>. shoutout Kevin, absolute legend 💖

and that's the whole page bestie!! every word list, every symlink, every fallback path — all accounted for. nothing skipped, nothing summarised, we keep every detail in this house 🏠✨

okay bye ily, this page was brought to you by Debian, dated 16 June 2003, living in section 5 of the Users' Manual as british-english-insane(5) 🌈 mwah 💅💖