On 5/22/19 5:19 AM, Richard Earnshaw (lists) wrote: > 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. :-)
English is always fun, agreed -- Martin cited the requirement to use "floating-point" when it's used as an adjective, which is certainly correct. There's a more interesting question around cavalier usage such as, "We should use floating point." I would argue that there is an implied noun "arithmetic" modified here, so this should also be hyphenated, but I daresay there would be people on both sides of this one... This is why grammar police usually die from friendly fire. :-) Bill > > R. >
