How to check spelling in Hunspell with case insensitive

Question

Hi I am making a desktop application (C#) that checks the spelling of the inputted word. I am using Hunspell which I added to my project using NuGet. I have 2 files the aff file and the dic file.

using (Hunspell english = new Hunspell("en_US.aff", "en_US.dic"))
{
    bool isExist = english.Spell("THesis");
}

isExist is equal to false because in my .dic file the correct spelling is "thesis". Even I use to .lower() and input proper names the isExist become false.

Can you help me in solving this?

Just to make it clear - you've tried `bool isExist = english.Spell("THesis".ToLower());`? — dash, Jul 26 '13 at 13:10
Yes. but if I input a proper name like "Canada" still it become false. because in the dictionary file the correct is Canada — MMakati, Jul 26 '13 at 13:13

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 03 '18 at 07:22

Given that Hunspell does not appear to support case-insensitive spelling checks, you might want to consider adapting your algorithm slightly:

Given THesis, you could try:

bool isExist = false;

using (Hunspell english = new Hunspell("en_US.aff", "en_US.dic"))
{
    TextInfo textInfo = new CultureInfo("en-US",false).TextInfo;
    isExist =      english.Spell("THesis") 
                 | english.Spell(textInfo.ToLower("THesis") 
                 | english.Spell(textInfo.ToUpper("THesis")) 
                 | english.Spell(textInfo.ToTitleCase("THesis"))
}

This will in turn logically check "THesis", "thesis", "THESIS" and "Thesis" and return true if any of those spellings is valid, courtesy of the logical OR operator.

Similarly for canada, this would work, as the ToTitleCase() method would at least guarantee a match.

This should work for most single words (including all caps acronyms).

This is too impractical. What to do for 1000 words? – Saeed Neamati Jun 15 '15 at 11:29 — Saeed Neamati, Jun 15 '15 at 11:29

Ben Strombeck · Answer 2 · 2013-07-26T15:08:32.950

If you want the ToLower() call to ignore the first character, do it this way:

var textToCheck = "THesis".Substring(0, 1) + "THesis".Substring(1).ToLower();
bool isExist = english.Spell(textToCheck);

If this isn't what you're looking for, see below:

I'm not entirely sure what you want the implementation to look like, but this might help too. Using the "ToTitleCase" will take a string and capitalize the first character. Also, by calling the toLower() inside of the ToTitleCase call will ensure that only the first character is capitalized.

bool isExist = english.Spell(System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase("THesis".toLower());

You might need some sort of if statement as well to specify whether or not the call to ToTitleCase should be called on the current string or not. Is this what you're looking for?

How to check spelling in Hunspell with case insensitive

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