On 21/05/2019 21:18, Bill Schmidt wrote: > On 5/21/19 11:47 AM, Martin Sebor wrote: >> The GCC coding style says to use "floating-point" as an adjective >> rather than "floating point." After enhancing the -Wformat-diag >> checker to detect this I found a bunch of uses of the latter, such >> as in: >> >> gcc/c/c-decl.c:10944 >> gcc/c/c-parser.c:9423, 9446, 9450, etc. >> gcc/convert.c:418, 422 >> gcc/cp/call.c:5070 >> gcc/cp/cvt.c:886 >> >> Before I fix them all and adjust the tests, I want to make sure >> we really want to follow this rule. The C standard uses both >> interchangeably. With just one exception, the C++ standard uses >> the hyphenated form. > The hyphenated form is correct English, so I certainly prefer it. :-) >
It's not quite as simple as that. Hyphens should be used to make it clear what is the adjective and what is the noun: A floating-point number (hyphenated) is a number with a floating point (no hyphen). In the first case 'floating-point' is the adjective and qualifies number. In the second case 'floating' is the adjective and qualifies 'point'. But this is English, so there are probably some exceptions even then - but not in this case, I think. :-) R.
