On 5/22/19 6:27 AM, Richard Earnshaw (lists) wrote:
On 22/05/2019 13:17, Bill Schmidt wrote:
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...
I would argue that leaving out "arithmetic" is the error. :-)
I agree. Unfortunately, there are a few cases like that among
the diagnostics that my script has already fixed:
decimal floating point not supported
comparing floating point with %<==%> or %<!=%> is unsafe
ISO C does not support decimal floating point
They probably should read
decimal floating point types not supported
comparing floating-point values with %<==%> or %<!=%> is unsafe
ISO C does not support decimal floating point types
I think they can be adjusted later if we think it's important,
after the checker is finalized and committed. I don't want to
complicate it too much by having to differentiate between
adjectives and nouns. The vast majority of the "floating point"
instances is has found are adjectives.
Martin
This is why grammar police usually die from friendly fire. :-)
Sticking your head above the parapet is always fraught with danger :)
R.
