Man page - pdict(1)

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Manual

DICT

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
MATCHING
OPTIONS
KNOWN BUGS AND LIMITATIONS
SEE ALSO
VERSION
AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT

NAME

pdict - a perl client for accessing network dictionary servers

SYNOPSIS

pdict [ OPTIONS ] word

DESCRIPTION

pdict is a client for the Dictionary server protocol ( DICT ), which is used to query natural language dictionaries hosted on a remote machine. When used in the most simple way,

% pdict word

pdict will look for definitions of word in the dictionaries hosted at dict.org . If no definitions are found, then dict will look for words which are similar, and list them:

% pdict bonana
no definition for "bonana" - perhaps you meant:
banana, bonanza, Banana, Bonanza, Bonasa

This feature is only available if the remote DICT server supports the soundex or Levenshtein matching strategies. You can use the -stats switch to find out for yourself.

You can specify the hostname of the DICT server using the -h option:

% pdict -h dict.org dictionary

A DICT server can support a number of databases; you can use the -d option to specify a particular database. For example, you can look up computer-related terms in the Free On-line Dictionary Of Computing ( FOLDOC ) using:

% pdict -h dict.org -d foldoc byte

To find out what databases (dictionaries) are available on a server, use the -dbs option:

% pdict -dbs

There are many dictionaries hosted on other servers around the net; a list of some of them can be found at

http://www.dict.org/links.html

MATCHING

Instead of requesting word definitions, you can use pdict to request a list of words which match a pattern. For example, to look for four-letter words starting in ’b’ and ending in ’p’, you would use:

% pdict -match -strategy re 'ˆb..p$'

The -match option says you want a list of matching words rather than a definition. The -strategy re says to use POSIX regular expressions when matching the pattern ˆb..p$ .

Most DICT servers support a number of matching strategies; you can get a list of the strategies provided by a server using the -strats switch:

% pdict -h dict.org -strats

OPTIONS

-h server or -host server

The hostname for the DICT server. If one isn’t specified then defaults to dict.org .

-p port or -port port

Specify the port for connections (default is 2628, from RFC 2229 ).

-d dbname or -database dbname

The name of a specific database (dictionary) to query.

-m or -match

Look for words which match the pattern (using the specified strategy).

-i dbname or -info dbname

Request information on the specified database. Typically results in a couple of pages of text.

-c string or -client string

Specify the CLIENT identification string sent to the DICT server.

-D or -dbs

List the available databases (dictionaries) on the DICT server.

-s strategy or -strategy strategy

Specify a matching strategy. Used in combination with -match .

-S or -strats

List the matching strategies (used in -strategy) supported by the DICT server.

-I or -serverinfo

Request information on the selected DICT server.

-help

Display a short help message including command-line options.

-doc

Display the full documentation for pdict .

-version

Display the version of pdict

-verbose

Display verbose information as pdict runs.

-debug

Display debugging information as pdict runs. Useful mainly for developers.

KNOWN BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

	•		pdict doesn’t know how to handle firewalls.
	•		The authentication aspects of RFC 2229 aren’t currently supported.
	•		Display of list results (eg from -strats and -dbs ) could be better.
	•		pdict isn’t very smart at handling combinations of options.
	•		Currently no support for a configuration file - will add one soon.

VERSION

$Revision: 1.2 $

AUTHOR

Neil Bowers <neil@bowers.com>

COPYRIGHT

This script is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.