On Friday, 2 June 2006 at 2:50:47 +1000, Bruce Evans wrote: > On Thu, 1 Jun 2006, John Baldwin wrote: > >> On Thursday 01 June 2006 06:01, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote: >>> On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 10:49:50AM +0100, Ceri Davies wrote: >>>> @@ -69,6 +69,10 @@ >>>> the file must be open for writing. >>>> .Sh RETURN VALUES >>>> .Rv -std >>>> +If the file to be modified is not a directory or >>>> +a regular file, the >>>> +.Fn truncate >>>> +call will return the value 0. >>> >>> Doesn't "value of 0" sound better? >> >> Not to me, though I can't explain why. I think the phrase "X will return >> the >> value Y" is common in man pages though. > > "will return" sounds strange to be.
Yes, it will be better if you avoid the future tense. > Normal is "Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned...". The passive is also to be avoided. How about "upon successful completion,\n.Nm\nreturns the value 0."? > This is part of what ".Rv -std" expands to. > > POSIX says "Upon successful completion, ftruncate( ) shall return 0...". Yes, but this is prescriptive. The man page should be descriptive. > The POSIX wording is better. "the value 0" says nothing more than > "0", It makes it clear that it's not a NULL pointer. > and "returns" is clearer than "is returned". Yes. > Saying "the value 0" is apparently a hack to give the clause a > subject (or is it an object? -- I think the value is the object > convoluted to a subject or vice versa). I don't think it makes any difference there. 0 is also a subject/object. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
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