SpellChecker.java

/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */
package spell.services;

/**
 * A simple service interface that defines a spell checker service.
 * A spell checker service checks the spelling of all words in a
 * given passage. A passage is any number of words separated by
 * a space character and the following punctuation marks: comma,
 * period, exclamation mark, question mark, semi-colon, and colon.
**/
public interface SpellChecker
{
    /**
     * Checks a given passage for spelling errors. A passage is any
     * number of words separated by a space and any of the following
     * punctuation marks: comma (,), period (.), exclamation mark (!),
     * question mark (?), semi-colon (;), and colon(:).
     * @param passage the passage to spell check.
     * @return An array of misspelled words or null if no
     *         words are misspelled.
    **/
    public String[] check(String passage);
}