Searching the Mac OSX System Dictionaries?

Question

I would like to search for words in the OS X system dictionary (or dictionaries) using a simple globe or regular expression rather than known text. (I am currently using /usr/share/dict/words instead, but the OSX dict will be much nicer.)

The Dictionary Services interface is rather limited and does not allow this, but it looks like DSGetTermRangeInString can do something similar under the hood. Does anyone know a way to access such features?

Alternatively, is there a way to extract a list of words from a dictionary? Then I could do it. Some dictionaries seem to contain the source XML in a package, which should be simple enough to parse, but (unsurprisingly, I think) that dictionaries in a large language only have binary data. Any clues as to what this might be?

Answer 1

The Apple Dictionary provided in OS X is licensed by one of the largest publishers. Legally, they cannot allow you to drop the entire list of words.