Turning off a dictionary does not seem to work

[alexbuckgit]

Info

Kind of Issue

• runtime - command-line tools

Which Tool or library

• cspell -- the command-line spelling tool

Which Version

Version: 5.4.0

Issue with supporting library?

• No

OS:

• Windows

version:

Windows 10

Bug Description

Describe the bug

Multiple acronyms that I want flagged as unknown are defined in an available dictionary. If I exclude that dictionary from the available dictionaries in configuration using "dictionaries": ["!softwareTerms"], those terms still aren't flagged. I also tried using "dictionaries": ["!software-terms"].

The attached test.md file contains four acronyms: HIPAA, RBAC, HIPPA, and RABC. The last two are spelled incorrectly for test purposes. The test.md file also contains lowercase versions of each acronym.

When running cspell trace for each acronyms, HIPPA and RBAC trace to the softwareTerms dictionary, and the incorrect spellings don't appear in any dictionary. After removing that dictionary, the four acronyms and the lowercase versions should be all be flagged as unknown words.

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Create the cspell.json and test.md files shown below in a local directory.
2. Run: cspell test.md -c cspell.json

Expected behavior

All four acronyms and the lowercase variations should all be flagged as unknown words.

cspell.json

{
    "version": "0.1",
    "language": "en",
    "dictionaries": [ "!softwareTerms" ],
    "enabled": true,
    "words": [],
    "ignoreWords": [
    ],
    "flagWords": [],
    "ignoreRegExpList": [
    ]
}

test.md

This file contains HIPAA, HIPAA, RABC, and RBAC as words.  
Lowercase versions of hipaa, hippa, rabc, and rbac also.

[Jason3S]

I agree that this is confusing. I think the behavior should be changed to be more intuitive.

There are two workarounds:

Workaround 1 - Include then exclude the dictionary name.

"dictionaries": [ "softwareTerms", "!softwareTerms" ],

Workaround 2 - Use languageSettings

{
    // delete "dictionaries": [ "!softwareTerms" ],
    // ...
    "languageSettings": [
        {
            // * to match all files.
            "languageId": "*",
            "dictionaries": [
                "!softwareTerms"
            ]
        }
    ],
    // ...
}

What is happening (tldr)

It is a ordering issue due to how the dictionary list is built. Dictionaries are applied in order.

1. All dictionaries declared at the top level are added to the list.
2. All file overrides are applied.
3. All new dictionaries declared in languageSettings that match the file are added next.

Because softwareTerms is enabled in languageSettings (see cspell-dicts/software-terms) the effective order becomes:

["!softwareTerms", "softwareTerms"]

Which results in:

["softwareTerms"]

[alexbuckgit]

Cool, I'll use the workaround for now. Thanks!

[github-actions]

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