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Date: Sun, 14 May 1995 15:15:08 +1000
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
Message-Id: <199505140515.PAA15213@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
To: graichen@sirius.physik.fu-berlin.de, rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com
Subject: Re: some small ideas
Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org
Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

>> graichen@mordillo:~cc
>> cc: No input files
>> graichen@mordillo:~c++
>> c++: No input files specified.
>> 
>> graichen@mordillo:~f77
>> f77: No input files specified.
>> 
>> why not:
>> 
>> graichen@mordillo:~cc
>> cc: No input files
>> graichen@mordillo:~c++
>> c++: No input files
>> graichen@mordillo:~f77
>> f77: No input files

>Why???  Look up the work specified, also look up what makes a sentence
>in an english book.  ``No input files'' is a the sentence fragement,
>error messages should be complete english sentences.

The Gnu coding standard (July 1994 version) says that error messages
like these should start with a capital letter but NOT end with a period.
It doesn't say anything about them being sentences.  Only the cc error
messages follows the the rule.  It must be the best example because rms
wrote more of it than of the others :-).

Bruce