Terminal does not recognize spell command

Question

I am teaching myself UNIX and messing arround with the terminal and noticed when the book I am using stated you can us
ls | spell
      to pipe the cpommands and spell check the list tht the ls command gets yet when I try to use the spell command it says it is not recognized and when I try and pull up the man page for it says it does not exist....any reason why it is not working?

Answer 1

Actually "spell" is not the first command you're going to find missing from a regular Mac OS X installation.
Each major Unix brand, style/family or distribution come with their own "standard" or default apps, commands or programs.  You'll soon likely want to get a hold of something like MacPorts [ MacPorts FAQ ] to manage the installation and update of a myriad of Un*x or Linux tools that you can still add to your Mac and enjoy.  Some of these package managers, like Fink [ Fink F.A.Q. ], offer a graphical tool to manage said installations.
As for getting something like "spell" on your Mac, for the command line, try adding "aspell" to yout system using one of the above managers.
Hope this helps!