Seeking guidance on spelling fixes

Seeking guidance on spelling fixes

[David Frey]

I noticed a common spelling mistake in some Linux kernel code that I was
reading the other day and it made me wonder how prevalent common spelling
mistakes are in the kernel.  I did some grepping and it seems that there
are a large number of spelling mistakes.  I did a bit of searching and I
found (http://www.kegel.com/kerspell/) which includes some comments/tools
relating to spelling and the Linux kernel.

I have gone ahead and corrected about 100 total instances based on 25
common misspellings.  There are many, many more common misspellings that I
could check, but I don't want to sink more time into this if the changes
won't be accepted.

Is this type of change likely to be accepted?  Right now I am making
individual git commits for each correction.  For example "aditional ->
additional".  I figured that it would be easier to review the list of
replacements rather than a mega-patch which fixes many different errors.
This way if any of the changes are controversial, I can easily rebase them
out.

I am trying to only correct true misspellings.  I'm not trying to choose
the "most correct" spelling for cases where there are acceptable alternate
spellings.

I've pushed the changes I have made so far to a "spelling_fixes" branch
here: https://github.com/dpfrey/linux/commits/spelling_fixes just in case
there is any question about what I am doing based on the above description.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to get this portion of the work merged at
this point.  I'm trying to get a feel for whether I should keep working on
this.

Thanks,
David Frey

Re: Seeking guidance on spelling fixes

[Randy Dunlap]

On 02/18/2018 07:34 AM, David Frey wrote:
> I noticed a common spelling mistake in some Linux kernel code that I was
> reading the other day and it made me wonder how prevalent common spelling
> mistakes are in the kernel.  I did some grepping and it seems that there
> are a large number of spelling mistakes.  I did a bit of searching and I
> found (http://www.kegel.com/kerspell/) which includes some comments/tools
> relating to spelling and the Linux kernel.
> 
> I have gone ahead and corrected about 100 total instances based on 25
> common misspellings.  There are many, many more common misspellings that I
> could check, but I don't want to sink more time into this if the changes
> won't be accepted.
> 
> Is this type of change likely to be accepted?  Right now I am making
> individual git commits for each correction.  For example "aditional ->
> additional".  I figured that it would be easier to review the list of
> replacements rather than a mega-patch which fixes many different errors.
> This way if any of the changes are controversial, I can easily rebase them
> out.
> 
> I am trying to only correct true misspellings.  I'm not trying to choose
> the "most correct" spelling for cases where there are acceptable alternate
> spellings.
> 
> I've pushed the changes I have made so far to a "spelling_fixes" branch
> here: https://github.com/dpfrey/linux/commits/spelling_fixes just in case
> there is any question about what I am doing based on the above description.
> 
> Just to be clear, I'm not trying to get this portion of the work merged at
> this point.  I'm trying to get a feel for whether I should keep working on
> this.

I can't answer for others, of course, but fixing spelling in user-visible
messages will usually be accepted/merged (e.g., error messages or Kconfig
help text).  I looked at a few of the commits and they are fixes in comments.
I would accept them, but I'm not a maintainer, just a contributor.

thanks,
-- 
~Randy

Re: Seeking guidance on spelling fixes

[Joe Perches]

(adding Colin King and Masahiro Yamada, the current
 and former spelling correction leading submitters)

On Sun, 2018-02-18 at 07:34 -0800, David Frey wrote:
> I noticed a common spelling mistake in some Linux kernel code that I was
> reading the other day and it made me wonder how prevalent common spelling
> mistakes are in the kernel.  I did some grepping and it seems that there
> are a large number of spelling mistakes.  I did a bit of searching and I
> found (http://www.kegel.com/kerspell/) which includes some comments/tools
> relating to spelling and the Linux kernel.
> 
> I have gone ahead and corrected about 100 total instances based on 25
> common misspellings.  There are many, many more common misspellings that I
> could check, but I don't want to sink more time into this if the changes
> won't be accepted.
> 
> Is this type of change likely to be accepted?

Yes.  Mostly.  Slowly.

> Right now I am making
> individual git commits for each correction.  For example "aditional ->
> additional".

That's best.
	
> I am trying to only correct true misspellings.  I'm not trying to choose
> the "most correct" spelling for cases where there are acceptable alternate
> spellings.

Right.  Please do not change Britishisms<->Americanisms

> I've pushed the changes I have made so far to a "spelling_fixes" branch
> here: https://github.com/dpfrey/linux/commits/spelling_fixes just in case
> there is any question about what I am doing based on the above description.
> 
> Just to be clear, I'm not trying to get this portion of the work merged at
> this point.  I'm trying to get a feel for whether I should keep working on
> this.

About half a year ago, these were the most frequent
typos checkpatch's spelling test found:

     98 'prefered' may be misspelled - perhaps 'preferred'?
     85 'occured' may be misspelled - perhaps 'occurred'?
     61 'endianess' may be misspelled - perhaps 'endianness'?
     60 'childs' may be misspelled - perhaps 'children'?
     53 'Interrup' may be misspelled - perhaps 'Interrupt'?
     51 'transfered' may be misspelled - perhaps 'transferred'?
     49 'TRESHOLD' may be misspelled - perhaps 'THRESHOLD'?
     48 'trun' may be misspelled - perhaps 'turn'?
     45 'commited' may be misspelled - perhaps 'committed'?
     41 'capabilites' may be misspelled - perhaps 'capabilities'?
     39 'sucess' may be misspelled - perhaps 'success'?
     39 'preemptable' may be misspelled - perhaps 'preemptible'?
     38 'struc' may be misspelled - perhaps 'struct'?
     35 'overriden' may be misspelled - perhaps 'overridden'?
     34 'CONTINOUS' may be misspelled - perhaps 'CONTINUOUS'?
     33 'programm' may be misspelled - perhaps 'program'?
     31 'splitted' may be misspelled - perhaps 'split'?
     30 'PALLETTE' may be misspelled - perhaps 'PALETTE'?
     28 'SUPPORED' may be misspelled - perhaps 'SUPPORTED'?
     28 'interupt' may be misspelled - perhaps 'interrupt'?
     28 'adress' may be misspelled - perhaps 'address'?
     27 'timout' may be misspelled - perhaps 'timeout'?
     27 'calle' may be misspelled - perhaps 'called'?
     26 'ASSIGMENT' may be misspelled - perhaps 'ASSIGNMENT'?
     26 'alow' may be misspelled - perhaps 'allow'?
     23 'seperate' may be misspelled - perhaps 'separate'?
     23 'dependant' may be misspelled - perhaps 'dependent'?
     23 'accomodate' may be misspelled - perhaps 'accommodate'?
     22 'specifc' may be misspelled - perhaps 'specific'?
     22 'continous' may be misspelled - perhaps 'continuous'?
     22 'beeing' may be misspelled - perhaps 'being'?
     21 'retrive' may be misspelled - perhaps 'retrieve'?
     21 'paramaters' may be misspelled - perhaps 'parameters'?
     21 'ouput' may be misspelled - perhaps 'output'?
     21 'ment' may be misspelled - perhaps 'meant'?
     21 'avaiable' may be misspelled - perhaps 'available'?
     21 'Acknowledgement' may be misspelled - perhaps 'Acknowledgment'?
     20 'wether' may be misspelled - perhaps 'whether'?
     20 'changable' may be misspelled - perhaps 'changeable'?
     19 'reseting' may be misspelled - perhaps 'resetting'?
     19 'orignal' may be misspelled - perhaps 'original'?
     18 'managment' may be misspelled - perhaps 'management'?
     18 'lenght' may be misspelled - perhaps 'length'?
     17 'UNDERUN' may be misspelled - perhaps 'UNDERRUN'?
     17 'syncronized' may be misspelled - perhaps 'synchronized'?
     17 'singal' may be misspelled - perhaps 'signal'?
     17 'paramters' may be misspelled - perhaps 'parameters'?