{"id":15650456,"url":"https://github.com/watson/old-unix-spell-checker","last_synced_at":"2026-02-28T07:08:41.315Z","repository":{"id":66011328,"uuid":"111804571","full_name":"watson/old-unix-spell-checker","owner":"watson","description":"A modern recreation of the UNIX spell checker example from \"The UNIX Operating System\" video","archived":false,"fork":false,"pushed_at":"2025-01-29T04:54:38.000Z","size":6,"stargazers_count":41,"open_issues_count":0,"forks_count":6,"subscribers_count":2,"default_branch":"master","last_synced_at":"2025-04-30T17:02:04.132Z","etag":null,"topics":["history","unix-command","video"],"latest_commit_sha":null,"homepage":null,"language":"Shell","has_issues":true,"has_wiki":null,"has_pages":null,"mirror_url":null,"source_name":null,"license":null,"status":null,"scm":"git","pull_requests_enabled":true,"icon_url":"https://github.com/watson.png","metadata":{"files":{"readme":"README.md","changelog":null,"contributing":null,"funding":null,"license":null,"code_of_conduct":null,"threat_model":null,"audit":null,"citation":null,"codeowners":null,"security":null,"support":null,"governance":null,"roadmap":null,"authors":null,"dei":null,"publiccode":null,"codemeta":null,"zenodo":null}},"created_at":"2017-11-23T12:03:42.000Z","updated_at":"2025-04-08T20:31:11.000Z","dependencies_parsed_at":"2025-04-30T17:02:07.160Z","dependency_job_id":"3f30b721-2c3b-43f5-b511-23c341a527e8","html_url":"https://github.com/watson/old-unix-spell-checker","commit_stats":null,"previous_names":[],"tags_count":0,"template":false,"template_full_name":null,"purl":"pkg:github/watson/old-unix-spell-checker","repository_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/watson%2Fold-unix-spell-checker","tags_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/watson%2Fold-unix-spell-checker/tags","releases_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/watson%2Fold-unix-spell-checker/releases","manifests_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/watson%2Fold-unix-spell-checker/manifests","owner_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners/watson","download_url":"https://codeload.github.com/watson/old-unix-spell-checker/tar.gz/refs/heads/master","sbom_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/watson%2Fold-unix-spell-checker/sbom","scorecard":null,"host":{"name":"GitHub","url":"https://github.com","kind":"github","repositories_count":286080680,"owners_count":29927261,"icon_url":"https://github.com/github.png","version":null,"created_at":"2022-05-30T11:31:42.601Z","updated_at":"2026-02-27T19:37:42.220Z","status":"online","status_checked_at":"2026-02-28T02:00:07.010Z","response_time":90,"last_error":null,"robots_txt_status":"success","robots_txt_updated_at":"2025-07-24T06:49:26.215Z","robots_txt_url":"https://github.com/robots.txt","online":true,"can_crawl_api":true,"host_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub","repositories_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories","repository_names_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repository_names","owners_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners"}},"keywords":["history","unix-command","video"],"created_at":"2024-10-03T12:34:42.662Z","updated_at":"2026-02-28T07:08:41.284Z","avatar_url":"https://github.com/watson.png","language":"Shell","funding_links":[],"categories":[],"sub_categories":[],"readme":"# Old UNIX Spell Checker\n\nIn an old video from Bell Labs, [Brian\nKernighan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kernighan) introduces the\naudience to the concept of pipelines in UNIX systems using a simple\nspell checking example:\n\n[![AT\u0026T Archives: The UNIX Operating\nSystem](https://img.youtube.com/vi/tc4ROCJYbm0/0.jpg)](https://youtu.be/tc4ROCJYbm0?t=384)\n\nMost of the programs used in the spell checking example are not present\nin modern UNIX variants. For fun I wanted to see how easy it would be to\nrecreate the same capabilities today.\n\nThe example operates on a text file called\n[`sentence`](https://github.com/watson/old-unix-spell-checker/blob/master/sentence):\n\n```\nAt Bell Laborotories\nUNIX systems privide\nmore timesharing ports\nthan all other systems\ncombined\n```\n\nThe original chain of commands used in the video are:\n\n```\nmakewords sentence | lowercase | sort | unique | mismatch\n```\n\nOnly the `sort` program still exists today. And the `unique` program\nhave been renamed to `uniq` on most systems.\n\nThis means we need to re-create `makewords`, `lowercase` and `mismatch`.\nThis repository contains those 3 programs.\n\nTo run them locally, simply clone this repository and run the following\npipeline:\n\n```\n./makewords sentence | ./lowercase | sort | uniq | ./mismatch\n```\n\nThe output of this command is:\n\n```\nlaborotories\nports\nprivide\nsystems\ntimesharing\nunix\n```\n\nFor more awesome old videos of computer history, check out [Awesome\nComputer History](https://github.com/watson/awesome-computer-history).\n\n## License\n\n[![CC0](https://licensebuttons.net/p/zero/1.0/88x31.png)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)\n\nTo the extent possible under law, [Thomas\nWatson](https://github.com/watson) has waived all copyright and related\nor neighboring rights to this work.\n","project_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Fwatson%2Fold-unix-spell-checker","html_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/projects/github.com%2Fwatson%2Fold-unix-spell-checker","lists_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Fwatson%2Fold-unix-spell-checker/lists"}