canadian-english-insane(5)

💖 canadian-english-insane — the manual, bestie edition 💖

okay so this is canadian-english-insane(5) from the Users' Manual, and before you ask — yes, the name is a whole vibe, and no, we are not changing it. sit down, grab a strawberry, and let's talk about the dictionary file that's just… sitting on your system, being iconic. 🍓✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

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

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

/usr/share/dict/canadian-english-insane is an ASCII file, and inside it? an alphabetic list of words, one per line. like a group chat but everyone's a word and nobody's talking back. 😌

🎀 FILES 🎀

bestie, there may be any number of word lists chillin' in /usr/share/dict/. it's giving dictionary mall. 🛍️

here's the chain of symlinks you need to know about, because it's lowkey a whole relay race:

• /etc/dictionaries-common/words is a symbolic link to the currently-chosen /usr/share/dict/<language> file. it's the main character that changes outfits depending on the language. 👑
• /usr/share/dict/words is a symbolic link to /etc/dictionaries-common/words, and this is the name by which other software should refer to the system word list. so if you're writing software, this is the name you use. periodt.
• wanna know more, and/or change which word list is currently chosen? go read select-default-wordlist(8). it handles all of that for you, no stress. 🫶

also, the directory /usr/share/dict can hold word lists for many languages, with the name of the language written in English. so like, /usr/share/dict/french and /usr/share/dict/danish contain respectively lists of French and Danish words — if they exist, okay, don't come for me if they're not there. 🙈

and heads up: such lists should be coded using the ISO 8859-1 character set encoding. that's the rule. respect it. ✨

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

go be nosy, bestie:

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

💀 HISTORY 💀

okay so the lore:

the word lists are not specific, and may be generated from any number of sources. mysterious. chaotic. we love that for them. 🌈

and plot twist — the system word list used to be /usr/dict/words. the old address. the ancestral home. 😭 for compatibility, software should check that location if /usr/share/dict/words does not exist. so like, knock on the old door if the new one's not answering. 🚪

👑 AUTHOR 👑

word lists are collected and maintained by various authors — it's a collab, not a solo album. 🎤

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 to Kevin, fr fr. 💜

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one came from Debian, dated 16 June 2003 — yeah, it's vintage, it's a classic, it aged like fine wine. 🍷✨ now go cat that word list and vibe. 🦋💖