pyspellchecker

0.9.0 · active · verified Sun Apr 12

pyspellchecker is a pure Python spell checker based on Peter Norvig's blog post, utilizing a Levenshtein Distance algorithm to find permutations and compare them to a word frequency list. It supports multiple languages including English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Arabic, and Basque. The current version is 0.9.0, and it is actively maintained with updates to support newer Python versions.

Warnings

breaking Version 0.9.0 removed support for Python 3.8 and 3.9. Users on these Python versions should use an older pyspellchecker version (e.g., <=0.8.x).
Fix: Upgrade Python to >=3.10 or pin `pyspellchecker` to a compatible version (e.g., `pyspellchecker<0.9.0`).
breaking As of version 0.9.0, a `ValueError` is raised if `language` is used simultaneously with `case_sensitive=True` or `local_dictionary` in the `SpellChecker` constructor, as these options are mutually exclusive.
Fix: Ensure that `language` is not set when `case_sensitive=True` or `local_dictionary` is provided.
gotcha For longer words or performance-critical applications, it is highly recommended to set the `distance` parameter to 1 (default is 2) during `SpellChecker` initialization or afterwards. A higher distance increases computation time significantly.
Fix: Initialize `SpellChecker(distance=1)` or set `spell.distance = 1` after instantiation.
gotcha Since version 0.7.0, `spell.correction()` and `spell.candidates()` will return `None` if no valid corrections or candidates are found for a given word. Previously, they might have returned the original word or an empty set.
Fix: Update code to explicitly check for `None` return values from `correction()` and `candidates()` to avoid unexpected `TypeError` or `AttributeError`.
gotcha pyspellchecker works by comparing permutations to a word frequency list and does not inherently understand word context. This means it may suggest corrections that are grammatically or contextually incorrect in a sentence (e.g., correcting 'their' to 'there').
Fix: Consider integrating with a contextual spell checker or grammar checker for applications requiring semantic understanding, or build a highly specific custom dictionary for your domain.

Install

pip install pyspellchecker Install with pip

Imports

SpellChecker
```
from spellchecker import SpellChecker
```
While the PyPI package is 'pyspellchecker', the primary class is imported directly from the 'spellchecker' module.

Quickstart

Initialize SpellChecker, identify unknown words, and get corrections or candidate spellings.

from spellchecker import SpellChecker

spell = SpellChecker()

mispelled_words = spell.unknown(['something', 'is', 'hapenning', 'here'])

for word in mispelled_words:
    print(f"Correction for '{word}': {spell.correction(word)}")
    print(f"Candidates for '{word}': {spell.candidates(word)}")

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