On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 10:51:25AM +0200, Alexander Hall wrote: > > > >But, my suggestion mainly was to introduce the word "should" > >in order to make the statement less passive, when stating what > >is expected of the program's first output line. > > Well I'm not all for rfc2119 imperatives in the man pages (and they are > rare), but I agree the sentence above is not perfectly clear. I'll drop > the comma and reorder a bit: > > Confirmation is considered affirmative if the exit status > is zero and the first line of the program's output is the > string "yes", or empty. > > I am however hoping to have jmc@ comment on this, as man pages are not > my bikeshed to paint. :-) > > /Alexander
i dislike "should" because it introduces ambiguity. the text you had originally was perfectly fine. but please, whatever happens, in the name of all that is good, do *not* use "Confirmation is considered affirmitive". please! jmc
