Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:00:01 GMT From: Jeremy Chadwick <jdc@koitsu.org> To: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: docs/176806: recv(2) man page grammatical fixes Message-ID: <201303101800.r2AI01CY087637@freefall.freebsd.org>
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The following reply was made to PR docs/176806; it has been noted by GNATS. From: Jeremy Chadwick <jdc@koitsu.org> To: Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net> Cc: bug-followup@freebsd.org Subject: Re: docs/176806: recv(2) man page grammatical fixes Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 10:52:01 -0700 On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 04:12:05PM +0200, Peter Pentchev wrote: > On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 12:20:13AM -0800, Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > > > > >Number: 176806 > > >Category: docs > > >Synopsis: recv(2) man page grammatical fixes > [snip] > > >Description: > > recv(2) has the following description for EAGAIN: > > > > [EAGAIN] The socket is marked non-blocking, and the receive > > operation would block, or a receive timeout had been > > set, and the timeout expired before data were > > received. > > > > Improper use of commas make the sentence difficult to comprehend, > > and the word "were" should be "was". > > Hmm, are you really sure about the "were" part? I think it may have > been used on purpose to indicate a counterfactual conditional - data > *was not* received, although it was supposed (expected) to be. This is actually a good question and I appreciate you bringing it up. The more I worked on this, the more I kept pondering the possibility of "were" being correct in this context. Quite often if you repeat a sentence over and over you start to think it's grammatically correct when it might not be. English, sigh... An itemised list of what went through my head: - Singular vs. plural: "data" in this context is singular (yes, even though there may be multiple bytes of data :-) ), not plural. We tend to use "was" when referencing a single thing, and "were" when referencing multiple things, - Counterfactual condition: unsure if this applies here. Use of the word "before" might play a role, but I'm not entirely sure. Compound sentences can make this difficult (and also explains why removal of said commas is necessary), - English is an awful language often ridden with exceptions to the rule. With was/were, there are some cases where both forms are grammatically correct (based on the speaker's education level) -- and "were" is often preferred in this case, - Most of the online resources I've read on this matter continually cite "simple" sentence examples; "If I (was|were) a dog" does not apply, for example, because the sentence starts with the word "if". That is not the case here -- the condition is known (the timeout was reached before any I/O arrived on the fd/socket). This may be one inquire about at english.stackexchange.com. I would be very interested to know what's grammatically correct here, or if this is one of those nuance cases where "was" *or* "were" can be used. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc@koitsu.org | | UNIX Systems Administrator http://jdc.koitsu.org/ | | Mountain View, CA, US | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP 4BD6C0CB |
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