WORDS(5)

💖 WORDS(5) 💖

ok so bestie, welcome to the Linux Programmers Manual page for WORDS(5) — yes that's the manual section five, yes it's the word list situation, and yes we're gonna get into it 💅

✨ NAME ✨

manx — it's giving... a list of Manx Gaelic words 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁭󠁮󠁸✨ (well, that's what this page is about, and the header up top calls the whole thing WORDS(5))

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so /usr/share/dict/manx is an ASCII file, and inside it is an alphabetic list of words. one per line. that's it. that's the whole vibe. literally just words, alphabetized, one per line 🦋

🎀 FILES 🎀

here's where it gets lowkey iconic, bestie, so pay attention 🫶

• /etc/dictionaries-common/words is a symbolic link pointing at a /usr/share/dict/<language> file.
• /usr/share/dict/words is a symbolic link to /etc/dictionaries-common/words, and this is the name that other software should use when it wants to refer to the system word list. like, that's the official girlie. the main character name 💅
• if you wanna know more, go read select-default-wordlist(8). she explains it.

the directory /usr/share/dict can hold word lists for so many languages — and the name of the language is written in English, okay? so like, /usr/share/dict/french and /usr/share/dict/danish contain, respectively, lists of French and Danish words <em>if they exist</em>. (that "if they exist" is doing a lot of work, no cap 🙈)

⚠️ heads up bestie: such lists should be coded using the ISO 8859-1 character set encoding. that's the encoding rule, periodt.

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

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

👑 HISTORY 👑

okay so storytime 📖✨

the words lists are not specific, and they may be generated from any number of sources. like, nobody's gatekeeping where these words came from, fr fr.

and here's the throwback: the system word list <em>used to be</em> /usr/dict/words. for compatibility, software should check that location if /usr/share/dict/words does not exist. yes queen, backwards compatibility, we love to see it 🫶

💜 AUTHOR 💜

word lists are collected and maintained by various authors. a whole committee of mystery icons, iykyk 🧚

and that's the page, bestie! this one's from the Linux manual, dated 16 July 2002, filed under WORDS(5) — mwah, slay, go alphabetize something 💖✨🎀