Configuration

CSpell's behavior can be controlled through a config file.

By default it looks for any of the following files:

• .cspell.json
• cspell.json
• .cSpell.json
• cSpell.json
• cspell.config.js
• cspell.config.cjs
• cspell.config.json
• cspell.config.yaml
• cspell.config.yml
• cspell.yaml
• cspell.yml
• package.json

Or you can specify a path to a config file with the --config <path> argument on the command line.

cspell.json

Example cspell.json file

// cSpell Settings
{
    // Version of the setting file.  Always 0.2
    "version": "0.2",
    // language - current active spelling language
    "language": "en",
    // words - list of words to be always considered correct
    "words": [
        "mkdirp",
        "tsmerge",
        "githubusercontent",
        "streetsidesoftware",
        "vsmarketplacebadge",
        "visualstudio"
    ],
    // flagWords - list of words to be always considered incorrect
    // This is useful for offensive words and common spelling errors.
    // For example "hte" should be "the"
    "flagWords": [
        "hte"
    ]
}

cspell.json sections

• version - currently always 0.2 - controls how the settings in the configuration file behave.

• language - this specifies the language locale to use in choosing the general dictionary. For example: "language": "en-GB" tells cspell to use British English instead of US English.

• words - a list of words to be considered correct.

• flagWords - a list of words to be always considered incorrect

• ignoreWords - a list of words to be ignored (even if they are in the flagWords).

• ignorePaths - a list of globs to specify which files are to be ignored.

  Example

  "ignorePaths": ["node_modules/**"]

  will cause cspell to ignore anything in the node_modules directory.

• maxNumberOfProblems - defaults to 100 per file.

• minWordLength - defaults to 4 - the minimum length of a word before it is checked.

• allowCompoundWords - defaults to false; set to true to allow compound words by default.

• dictionaries - list of the names of the dictionaries to use. See Dictionaries.

• dictionaryDefinitions - this list defines any custom dictionaries to use. This is how you can include other languages like Spanish.

  Example

  "language": "en",
  // Dictionaries "spanish", "ruby", and "corp-terms" will always be checked.
  // Including "spanish" in the list of dictionaries means both Spanish and English
  // words will be considered correct.
  "dictionaries": ["spanish", "ruby", "corp-terms", "fonts"],
  // Define each dictionary:
  //  - Relative paths are relative to the config file.
  //  - URLs will be retrieved via HTTP GET
  "dictionaryDefinitions": [
      { "name": "spanish", "path": "./spanish-words.txt"},
      { "name": "ruby", "path": "./ruby.txt"},
      {
        "name": "corp-terms",
        "path": "https://shared-company-repository/cspell-terms.txt"
      },
  ],

• ignoreRegExpList - list of patterns to be ignored

• includeRegExpList - (Advanced) limits the text checked to be only that matching the expressions in the list.

• patterns - this allows you to define named patterns to be used with ignoreRegExpList and includeRegExpList.

  Example

  "patterns": [
      {
          "name": "comment-single-line",
          "pattern": "/#.*/g"
      },
      {
          "name": "comment-multi-line",
          "pattern": "/(?:\\/\\*[\\s\\S]*?\\*\\/)/g"
      },
      // You can also combine multiple named patterns into one single named pattern
      {
          "name": "comments",
          "pattern": ["comment-single-line", "comment-multi-line"]
      }
  ],
  
  "ignoreRegExpList": ["comments"]

• languageSettings - this allow for per programming language configuration settings. See LanguageSettings.

package.json

It is possible to store CSpell configuration in the package.json file of a project. CSpell looks for the configuration in the cspell field of the .json file.

{
  "name": "cspell-docs",
  "description": "Documentation for CSpell",
  // ...
  "cspell": {
    "version": "0.2",
    "useGitignore": true
  }
}