Tip Of The Day : Use dict

Submitted by sudheer on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 23:43

Have you fallen in love with the command line? Do you use a graphical browser to visit dictionary sites like wiktionary.org?

Use dictd.

What does dictd do?

[sudheer@localhost ~]$ yum info dictd
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, refresh-packagekit
Installed Packages
Name       : dictd
Arch       : i386
Version    : 1.10.11
Release    : 3
Size       : 728 k
Repo       : installed
Summary    : DICT protocol (RFC 2229) command-line client
URL        : http://www.dict.org/
License    : GPL+ and zlib and MIT
Description: Command-line client for the DICT protocol.  The Dictionary Server
           : Protocol (DICT) is a TCP transaction based query/response protocol that
           : allows a client to access dictionary definitions from a set of natural
           : language dictionary databases.

Install the software:

yum install dictd

Sample usage:

dict computer

Output looks like:

[sudheer@localhost ~]$ dict computer
6 definitions found
 
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
 
  Computer \Com*put"er\ (k[o^]m*p[=u]t"[~e]r), n.
     1. One who computes.
 
     2. (Computers) an electronic device for performing
        calculations automatically. It consists of a clock to
        provide voltage pulses to synchronize the operations of
        the devices within the computer, a central processing
        unit, where the arithmetical and logical operations are
        performed on data, a random-access memory, where the
        programs and data are stored for rapid access, devices to
        input data and output results, and various other
        peripheral devices of widely varied function, as well as
        circuitry to support the main operations.
 
...

Bookmark/Search this post with: