Fernando Carrijo <fcarrijo1980 <at> gmail.com> writes: > > Hi!While reading the m4 documentation (www.gnu.org/software/m4/manual, last update on April 02, 2008) I found a small typographical error. In section 1.2 Historical References, there is an allusion to Christopher Strachey. His name was erroneously written as Stratchey. The same mistake can be seen in section 4.2.This surely ain't the most adequate place for this kind of stuff.Hope it helps anyway. >
Thanks for the report; and this is absolutely the right place to report it. Wikipedia has the same bug (perhaps cribbing a bit too much text from m4's manual?): search for M4 on the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Strachey At any rate, the bug has been present as far back as the CVS records go (m4 1.3, more than 14 years ago). I'm applying this, although you'll have to wait until M4 1.6 before the web pages get updated to match: >From 05528e98e0257bcccbb5001b8ff09293e42d19b6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Eric Blake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:27:01 -0600 Subject: [PATCH] Fix spelling of attribution to Christopher Strachey. * doc/m4.texinfo (History, Inhibiting Invocation): Fix typo. * THANKS: Update. Reported by Fernando Carrijo. Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --- ChangeLog | 7 +++++++ THANKS | 1 + doc/m4.texinfo | 4 ++-- 3 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog index 58abd2d..8a29282 100644 --- a/ChangeLog +++ b/ChangeLog @@ -1,3 +1,10 @@ +2008-04-21 Eric Blake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> + + Fix spelling of attribution to Christopher Strachey. + * doc/m4.texinfo (History, Inhibiting Invocation): Fix typo. + * THANKS: Update. + Reported by Fernando Carrijo. + 2008-04-17 Eric Blake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Fix buildbot failure. diff --git a/THANKS b/THANKS index 8d0aae1..eb2a79d 100644 diff --git a/doc/m4.texinfo b/doc/m4.texinfo index cefadfe..05b349f 100644 --- a/doc/m4.texinfo +++ b/doc/m4.texinfo @@ -346,7 +346,7 @@ debugging their @code{m4} scripts than doing real work. Beware that @cindex history of @code{m4} @cindex @acronym{GNU} M4, history of @code{GPM} was an important ancestor of @code{m4}. See -C. Stratchey: ``A General Purpose Macro generator'', Computer Journal +C. Strachey: ``A General Purpose Macro generator'', Computer Journal 8,3 (1965), pp.@: 225 ff. @code{GPM} is also succinctly described into David Gries classic ``Compiler Construction for Digital Computers''. @@ -1273,7 +1273,7 @@ with no arguments. @section Preventing macro invocation An innovation of the @code{m4} language, compared to some of its -predecessors (like Stratchey's @code{GPM}, for example), is the ability +predecessors (like Strachey's @code{GPM}, for example), is the ability to recognize macro calls without resorting to any special, prefixed invocation character. While generally useful, this feature might sometimes be the source of spurious, unwanted macro calls. So, @acronym{GNU} -- 1.5.5
