• What is it?
• Installing edictionary on UNIX
• Installing edictionary on Windows
• Perl on Linux
• Perl on other UNIX platforms
• Perl on Windows
• Using edictionary
• Listing Available Dictionaries
• Disabling Color in Output
  
• Suggestions/Alternate meanings
• Thesaurus support
• Configuring edictionary - .edictrc
  
• Syntax
• Example Configuration File
  

What is it? [top]

--------------------------------- IMPORTANT ------------------------------------
NOTE: Please note that edict uses various dictionary web-sites to fetch the
meanings of the words. Please read the "TERMS OF USE" of the dictionary
site before you start using it. Don't use the program if you intend to violate
the "TERMS OF USE". The author of this program will not be held responsible for
any violations/consequences in any way. The program is provided just to
facilitate fetching text using HTTP.
--------------------------------- IMPORTANT ------------------------------------
 

Installing edictionary on Unix [top]

make install

This will install the edictionary program in the /usr/bin directory most probably. Run make without any arguments to verify that. If you want to install edictionary in a different directory, you can run the above command as

make prefix=/my/dir install
 

Installing edictionary on Windows [top]

wininstall [<target dir>]

The <target dir> is optional. If you specify a <target dir>, edict will be installed in that very directory.  So you can run the command as

wininstall

Or you can specify a target location

wininstall c:\my\dir

NOTE: The path <target dir> should be an absolute path. This means you SHOULD NOT say

wininstall mydir

Instead, you should say

wininstall c:\path\to\mydir

Now you should edit your PATH variable to include <target dir>.  Open the System icon in Control Panel and select the Advanced tab. Now, click on "Environment Variables..." to edit your PATH.
 

Perl on Linux [top]

rpm -q perl

This should return something like

perl-5.6.0-9

If you see something like

package perl is not installed

you'll have to install Perl by downloading the rpm for Perl.
 

Perl on Other Unix Platforms [top]

perl -v

If you get an error, Perl may not be present on your system. You should download Perl and install it.
 

Perl on Windows [top]

perl -v

This should print the version of the Perl interpreter installed on your machine. If, instead, you get an error indicating command not found, your Perl installation failed.
 

Using edictionary [top]

edict <word>

where <word> is the word for which you want to lookup the meaning.  The first line in the edict source file specifies the path of the Perl interpreter. If Perl is installed in a path different from /usr/bin, you can change it there.

On Win32 platforms, you'll have to run edictionary as

perl <edict> <word>

where <edict> is the absolute or relative path of the edict program and <word> is the word you are looking for. So an example run can be

perl c:\bin\edict orotund

This will display the meaning of the word "orotund" provided you have Perl installed on your machine and the file c:\bin\edict exists.

Multiple words may be specified as

edict sexist misogynist dinosaur

It is possible that you don't have a direct connection to Internet and use a proxy-server. In that case you can ask edictionary to use a proxy-server by typing

edict -p server:port orotund

If you supply an invalid word to edictionary as:

edict junkword

you'll see the following as error:

Don't understand Swahili words like junkword! ;)

Listing Available Dictionaries [top]
Since 2.0-beta, edictionary supports an option "-l" (small 'L') to list all the dictionaries available to the user.
[user@host dir]$ edict -l
edict - Your personal command line dictionary. Version 2.0-beta.
Name                      Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mwdict                    Merriam Webster Online Dictionary
mwthes                    Merriam Webster Online Thesaurus

These dictionary names can be used to specify your default dictionary in the configuration file.

Disabling Color in Output [top]
Since version 1.2, edictionary outputs colored text for mwdict and mwthes. This is supposed to work only on Linux platforms though. There have been complaints by some users that color option doesn't always work right. Since 2.0-beta, there's a new option "-c" which will disable the color in the output.

Suggestions/Alternate Meanings [top]

Suggestions and alternate meanings are available starting edict-1.0-beta2. You don't have to do anything to turn on this feature as it is automatically turned on. All you have to do is to use the edictionary to view the meaning.

Let's say you type the wrong spellings for the word dyslexia. You'll get the suggestions as:

C:\>edict dyselxia
Don't understand Swahili words like dyselxia ;)!!
-----------------------------------------------------
Suggestions/Alternative meanings
-----------------------------------------------------
1) dyslexia                   2) dyslexias
3) dyslexic                   4) dyslexics
5) dieselize                  6) dismally
7) Disraeli                   8) decillion
9) disrelish                 10) dustlike
-----------------------------------------------------
Your choice: 1

You can then enter the numeric code for the correct word you want.

Similarly, edict also offers you multiple meanings (if any) for a word.

C:\>edict catch
.... meaning text ....
-----------------------------------------------------
Suggestions/Alternative meanings
-----------------------------------------------------
1) catch[1,verb]                2) catch[2,noun]
3) catch-as-catch-can           4) catch on
5) catch out                    6) catch-22
7) catch-up[1,adjective]        8) catch-up[2,noun]
9) catch up                    10) circus catch
-----------------------------------------------------
Your choice: 6

Thesaurus Support [top]

Staring with edict-1.0, thesaurus support is also available. You can get the thesaurus entries for the word "laconic" by executing the command:

ethes laconic

Rest of the usage is similar to that of edict.