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Implementing a command line thesaurus

Many people make use of dict to lookup word definitions. (If this is new to you, try dict word). Sometimes what we need instead of a dictionary is a thesaurus. This week's tip demonstrates a script to do just that.

Note: You need html2text installed before using this script.

Code Listing 1: ~/bin/thes

#!/bin/sh 
#-------- 
# Command line thesaurus 
 
BROWSER="/usr/bin/lynx -source" 
WEBSITE="http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=$1" 
HTML2TEXT="/usr/bin/html2text -style compact" 
 
if test $1; then 
    ${BROWSER} ${WEBSITE} | ${HTML2TEXT} | ${PAGER} 
else 
    echo "Usage: $0 word" 
    exit 1 
fi 

To use this script, name it thes, make it executable, and make sure that it's in your $PATH. Then, run the script followed by the word you're interested in.

Code Listing 2

$ thes word

From http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20040531-newsletter.xml

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