From: Ed Bradford <egbegb2@gmail.com>
To: M Douglas McIlroy <m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>
Cc: UNIX Heritage Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Question
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2021 02:58:58 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAHTagfFgpoM29QncKruu6QO2z75H7fwHCEhJtP-v7Y=bAoJeOw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAKH6PiW9ikWD6j4qYmsF_+Z4YcnApKJwO=if0W4ssHo6JUW+QA@mail.gmail.com>
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1772 bytes --]
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@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@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> > 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
>
--
Advice is judged by results, not by intentions.
Cicero
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-01-04 8:59 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-01-03 20:23 M Douglas McIlroy
2021-01-04 8:58 ` Ed Bradford [this message]
2021-01-04 9:07 ` Rob Pike
2021-01-04 9:12 ` Niklas Karlsson
2021-01-04 14:11 ` Clem Cole
2021-01-04 15:39 ` John P. Linderman
2021-01-04 9:08 ` arnold
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2021-01-10 2:43 Rudi Blom
2021-01-09 8:39 Norman Wilson
2021-01-09 8:50 ` Rob Pike
2021-01-05 4:36 Rudi Blom
2021-01-03 10:13 Ed Bradford
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