Golang : Spell checking with ispell example

Chinese New Year for 2017 celebration just over and now it is time to get back to work. Here is a simple example on how to wrap ispell program in Golang. ispell is a command line utility that can be used to check if a word is spelled correctly and if not, it will give a list of suggestions.

Pretty straightforward explanation can be found in the code below. This version should work correctly for International Ispell Version 3.4.00 8 Feb 2015.

Here you go!

 package main

 import (
 "fmt"
 "os"
 "os/exec"
 "strings"
 )

 func handleError(err error) {
 if err != nil {
 fmt.Println(err)
 os.Exit(1)
 }
 }

 func ispellWrapper(inputWord string) string {
 cmd := exec.Command("ispell")
 stdin, err := cmd.StdinPipe()

 handleError(err)

 stdin.Write([]byte(inputWord + "\n"))
 stdin.Close()

 data, err := cmd.Output()

 if err != nil {
 panic(err)
 }

 // skip the credit line and get the remainder text
 interestData := data[52:]

 // check for "word: ok"
 test := string(interestData[:8])
 if (strings.Contains(test, "word: ok")) || (strings.Contains(test, "word: how")) {
 //fmt.Println("Word ok")
 return "Word ok"
 } else {
 // remove the "how about:" and the new line prompt "word:  "
 // and return the suggestions from ispell
 test1 := interestData[17 : len(interestData)-7]
 trimmed := strings.TrimSpace(string(test1))
 return trimmed
 }

 }

 func main() {

 // spell check some words, if nothing is wrong with the given word
 // you will get "Word ok" else you will get suggestions from ispell
 fmt.Println(ispellWrapper("hello"))
 fmt.Println(ispellWrapper("stinge"))
 fmt.Println(ispellWrapper("wattee"))

 }

Output:

Word ok

singe, sting, stinger, stings, stingy, tinge

wattle

Happy coding!

References:

https://www.socketloop.com/tutorials/trim-white-spaces-string-golang

https://www.socketloop.com/tutorials/golang-how-to-pipe-input-data-to-executing-child-process