Programmer's Language-Aware Spell Checker?

Jerry Asher writes "Not all of my coworkers are careful about spelling errors. Sometimes this causes real embarrassment as spelling errors creep into software interfaces. Does anyone know of spell checkers for programming languages? I don't want a text spell checker, I want a programming-language-aware spell checker. A spell checker that I can pass all of my code through and will flag spelling errors in function names, variable names, and comments, but will ignore language keywords, language constructs and expressions, and various programming styles (camel code, or underscores, or...). I want a spell checker that knows that void *functionSigniture(char *myRoutine) contains one spelling error. Does anyone have such a thing for Java or C++? Are there any Eclipse plugins that do this?"

Comments

How about eyeball Mk 1?

[uucp2]

Some people call using it a "code review". If you are really serious about it, post the code to /. - plenty of people here seem to have time to point out any spelling errors.

Re:How about eyeball Mk 1?

[asc99c]

I bet there's a spelling mistake in here

That's a good bet in a post explicitly pointing out a famous spelling mistake :)

Re:How about eyeball Mk 1?

[Hal_Porter]

Excuse me, as a National Socialist I find the term "spelling Nazi" offensive. Couldn't you say "spelling Jew" instead?

May I suggest....

[mark-t]

.... that if you want your code to read like english, you consider a language like COBOL? Not that it would help you with spell checking, per se... but if one is going to be so pedantic about making sure that their procedure names can be found in an actual english dictionary why not go the whole 9 yards and write the whole program that way?

Re:How about the Built-in OS X spell checker?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

How about the Built-in OS X spell checker?

We're talking about programming, friend.

Re:Eclipse WTP 3.3 Europa seems to do this.. almos

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Also plenty of spellcheckers will ignore one or two letter words.

So if you use fortran, you're screwed? No change there, then ...

Re:Quit employing idiots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Review your code, review their core, spell check everything by hand

I think you meant, "review their code"...

(Although clearly no automated spell checker would have caught that.)

Re:Visual Assist

[nietsch]

Please don't use the names of the tools the beast of Redmond uses to stupify the world. This is /. after all, if you have to code on/for windos, then please be humble and shy about it.

Re:the problem is really prevalent

[Hognoxious]

I have seen large portions of source code, much of it commercial, containing not one or two but hundreds of spelling mistakes.

Man, I was digging around in some SAP code recently and none of it made sense. Half of it didn't even look like English!

Re:Eclipse WTP 3.3 Europa seems to do this.. almos

[somersault]

His next project is to have a handy little helper with a RAM chip avatar. His name is chippy and he comes out with helpful phrases like:

"You appear to be creating an infinite loop. Would you like me to increment your counter variable?"

"You appear to be writing a virus, would you like a list of the latest Windows Vista sploits?"

Re:Visual Assist

[somersault]

Yes. You must not speak of the-one-who-rhymes-with-masturbates, or he will cast an unforgivable curse on your machine: puteulanus fenestra mortalis!

Man Dies Waiting for Eclipse to Launch

[Anonymous Coward]

Man Dies Waiting for Eclipse to Launch

A software engineer in San Jose, CA was found dead at his desk yesterday, apparently having died while waiting for his Java editing program, Eclipse, to finish its boot process. Coworkers say the engineer came in that morning vowing to "get Eclipse working on his box or die trying." The last thing anyone heard him say aloud was the cryptic comment: "I see the splash screen is appropriately blue." Nobody knows what he meant. The man was then thought to have fallen asleep, but hours later it was discovered that the engineer had died suddenly of apparent natural causes. The forensics team's investigation that evening was reportedly interrupted unexpectedly when the dead man's Eclipse program suddenly finished launching. The team tried to interact with it to see if they could find clues about the man's death, but the program was unresponsive and the machine ultimately had to be rebooted. At this time, the police commissioner says there is no evidence of foul play, and they currently believe the man simply died of either boredom or frustration.

Re:How about this

[Anonymous Coward]

who decided that TextLikeThis is more readable than text_like_this?

perl -ne "s/([a-z])([A-Z])/$1 $2/g; tr/A-Za-z/ /c; foreach (split) { print qq{$_\n} unless $seen{lc $_}++ }" source_file... If you are concerned about readability, perl may not be your first choice.

Re:ego != good_open_minded_programmer

[SausageOfDoom]

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:What the fuck is the OP on?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's in the third word. You missed a letter.

Re:ego != good_open_minded_programmer

[KavyBoy]

From the GP's website when view without Flash:
We're the do-anything team that specialises in imaginging new ways for you to reach your audience.

The word "pwned" doesn't spell check correctly either, but it is applicable.

A painful experience

[Tom DBA]

I was doing work at NASA. NASA was still into punch cards years after very powerful text editors came into existence. I remember the day my girl friend offered to key punch the PDP-11 code I had written onto coding pad to cards. "Honey, you sure can't spell very good. Good thing I caught it. Move is spelled with an 'e'." :-(

Re:READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE

[Random832]

no, clearly he meant you need to keep all your _identifiers_ in external files too, by "interface" he means API