Strangeness in \"spell\"

[Will Martin]

This refers to the "spell" command in System V Release 2 on a Sperry/Unisys
system; the version of "spell" that uses the files in /usr/lib/spell (if
there are other spelling checkers that might be confused with this one).
(This is the same under Sys V Release 3, too. I append the /etc/SYSIDENT
files at the end of this message.)

The strange result is that the word "automation" is accepted by spell
(as it should be) if it is in all lower-case. However, "Automation"
and "AUTOMATION" are rejected as misspelled. Other words are NOT
case-sensitive in this fashion. (Some acronyms we have added to the
dictionary deliberately in all-uppercase are case-sensitive, of course.)

Is this unique to our system(s), or do the capitalized versions of
the word "automation" come out as misspelled at your installations,
too? Are there other words that act this way? Is this well-known or
is this a new discovery?

Could this be the result of the hashed dictionary having "automation"
fall on some sort of boundary or location in the file that causes odd
results? In that case, other words would probably come out with the
same strangeness, but finding them would be difficult...

Regards, Will Martin
US Army Materiel Cmd Systems Integration & Mgmt Activity

PS -- Here are the /etc/SYSIDENT files on the affected systems:

053086 DOMESTIC VERSION 5.2 RELEASE 1R1
870723 1R1 s90 UPDATE-07 (see /etc/UPDATE)
0727 Software Change Package 1.1 (O.S. 1R1.0-M.f)
0321 OFIS One 1.1 Patch 
0403 OFIS One 1.1 Patch 

88:02:18 DOMESTIC VERSION 5.3 RELEASE 5.0
0606 OFIS One 1.1 Patch 
***End***