The "look" cli dictionary only sees capitalized words

[Lars Ekman]

In Ubuntu 20.04;
~ > look accident
accident
accident's
accidental
accidental's
accidentally
accidentals
accidents
In Ubuntu 22.04;
~ > look accident
(nothing)
~ > look acc
Accenture
Accenture's
Accra
Accra's
Digging deeper; the dictionary at /usr/share/dict/words seems OK.
If I copy the "look" binary from Ubuntu 20.04 and use it on Ubuntu 22.04 it works;
~ > ./look accident
accident
accidental
accidentally
accidental's
accidentals
accident's
accidents

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
Package: bsdextrautils 2.37.2-4ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.15.0-27.28-generic 5.15.30
Uname: Linux 5.15.0-27-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu82
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Tue May 3 14:19:57 2022
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-09-07 (1334 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180725)
SourcePackage: util-linux
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to jammy on 2022-05-01 (2 days ago)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. Indeed it seems buggy but the description isn't accurate since using it with 'keyboard' works as expected

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could be the same issue than https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues/1493

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Curiously some words starting with b seem fine:

 $ look butter
butter
buttercup
buttercup's
buttercups
buttered
butterfat
..

[Olivier Gayot (ogayot)]

There seems to be something wrong with the way the ignore-case option is handled:

   -f, --ignore-case fold lower case to upper case characters

The option is enabled by default when running `look <word>` and the only way to disable it is to specify the wordlist as the next positional parameter.

```
$ look accident
> KO (-f is enabled by default)
$ look accident /usr/share/dict/words
accident
accidental
accidentally
accidental's
accidentals
accident's
accidents
> OK (-f is not enabled)
$ look -f accident /usr/share/dict/words
> KO
```

Also, look was provided by bsdmainutils (i.e., src:bsdmainutils) in focal but bsdextrautils (i.e., src:util-linux) in impish/jammy. This is a different implemention. I wonder if the assumption on the sorting order of the dictionary is the same.

[Heinrich Schuchardt (xypron)]

The same behavior can be seen in Ubuntu 23.04.

The look command requires a sorted file.
If no argument is given /usr/share/dict/words is used as default file and the f flag is set.
/usr/share/dict/words is sorted with upper case preceding lower case.
But when the f flag is set a sort ignoring case is assumed.

So the command look works as documented.

It is simply that the sort sequence of /usr/share/dict/words does not match what look needs.

You can create your own wordlist, sort it to your needs, and point environment variable WORDLIST to it.

$ cat /usr/share/dict/american-english | sort > foo
$ WORDLIST=foo look accicent
accident
accidental
accidentally
accidental's
accidentals
accident's
accidents

I would suggest not to change anything in util-linux.

[Lars Ekman (uablrek)]

The --dictionary-order option must be given to "sort" as described in;

https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues/1493#issuecomment-1139358186

Um, will you *ever* fix this?

I am using the work-around with $WORDLIST, and it works fine, but IMO I shouldn't have to.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) has reached end of life, so this bug will not be fixed for that specific release.