Proofreading documents with awk

[Gunter Steinbach]

> / hpl-opus:comp.unix.questions / heit at meme.Stanford.EDU (Evan Heit) /  
> 3:57 pm  Dec 15, 1989 /
> I am looking for someone who has written a program in awk that will
> will allow me to proofread my papers by by looking for word repetitions.

How about this awk script:

awk '{p=0 # use a flag to avoid one line multiple times
    if($1==last) {p=1; print NR-1 ": " last} # to catch doubles across lines
    for(f=2;f<=NF;f++) if($f==$(f+1)) p=1
    if(p==1) print NR ": " $0
    last=$NF}'

This is the output when run on your original note:

15: will
16: will allow me to proofread my papers by by looking for word repetitions.

Good enough?

	 Guenter Steinbach		gunter_steinbach at hplabs.hp.com