On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 07:17:27PM +0100, Jason McIntyre wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 08:07:42AM -0400, Ryan Kavanagh wrote:
> > Hi Jason,
> > 
> > On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 08:08:59 +0059, Jason McIntyre wrote:
> > > i've committed this, but used the text from freebsd's man page. it was
> > > very similar anyway, but reads a wee bit better.
> > 
> > > +.Sh EXIT STATUS
> > > +The
> > > +.Nm
> > > +utility exits with one of the following values:
> > > +.It 0
> > > +Notification is enabled.
> > > +.It 1
> > > +Notification is disabled.
> > 
> > Thanks for looking at my patch. In that case, I would recommend
> > tweaking my patch to make it read a bit better rather than applying
> > FreeBSD's patch since my "was _ at invocation time" bit is crucial to
> > understanding the exit statuses. FreeBSD's patch doesn't tell you
> > based on what state it returns an exit status---before or after it
> > makes the change---when in fact, the exit status is based on what the
> > value was before any change was made.
> > 
> > For example, if notification was disabled,
> > 
> >     biff y
> > 
> > would return 1, which might be confusing seeing that the FreeBSD
> > manpage says it returns 0 if "Notification is enabled". Similarly, if
> > notification was enabled,
> > 
> >     biff n
> > 
> > would return 0, and just
> > 
> >     biff
> > 
> > returns 0/1 if enabled/disabled respectively.
> > 
> > I hope this helps clarify the wordiness of the initial patch.
> > 
> > Best wishes,
> > Ryan
> > 
> 
> hmm. you're right that i failed to see that. but i'm surprised it works
> that way. surely if i run "biff y" i want to see that it has
> successfully enabled mail notification, and not whether it was
> previously enabled. and if i just want to check if it's currently on or off,
> i just run biff w/o flags.
> 
> so, i'll make the amendment, but posting this in case someone can
> clarify.
> 
> jmc
> 

ok, so no one replied. i've gone ahead and changed the text. however, i
feel uncomfortable about "invocation time", so i changed it to "was
enabled/disabled at the time of invocation".

thanks for following this up,
jmc

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