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.
Normal is "Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned...".
This is part of what ".Rv -std" expands to.
POSIX says "Upon successful completion, ftruncate( ) shall return 0...".
The POSIX wording is better. "the value 0" says nothing more than "0",
and "returns" is clearer than "is returned". 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).
FreeBSD has a deshallify.sh script to adjust the POSIX wording. It
does s/shall return/returns/.
Bruce
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