Date: Tue, 08 May 2001 11:21:15 -0700 (PDT) From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: Peter Pentchev <roam@orbitel.bg> Cc: cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, Ruslan Ermilov <ru@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/share/man/man9 printf.9 Message-ID: <XFMail.010508112115.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <20010507184754.G39862@ringworld.oblivion.bg>
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On 07-May-01 Peter Pentchev wrote: > On Mon, May 07, 2001 at 08:35:29AM -0700, John Baldwin wrote: >> >> On 07-May-01 Ruslan Ermilov wrote: >> > ru 2001/05/07 05:48:39 PDT >> > >> > Modified files: >> > share/man/man9 printf.9 >> > Log: >> > A bit of markup and spelling fixes. >> >> Err, NULL (for pointers) is capitalized, but I thought the nul char was just >> that: nul. No caps or anything. Also, this manpage was up for review on >> -doc >> for a week, it would have been nice if you had made suggestions then. > > fgrep -B 2 -A 1 -w NUL /usr/src/usr.bin/find/find.1 > > It prints the pathname of the current file to standard output, followed by an > .Tn ASCII > .Tn NUL > character (character code 0). NUL isn't a trademark of a company, so the markup of this manpage already isn't a stellar example. :) > There are other examples all over the source tree: bin/dd, usr.bin/lex, > usr.bin/telnet, usr.bin/tr, usr.bin/what, usr.bin/xargs, libexec/rexecd, > libexec/rshd, contrib/bc, contrib/libio/dbz, contrib/ncurses, > gnu/usr.bin/grep, > and I may have missed some ;) > > And it's not just FreeBSD - in every ASCII table I've seen, the special > characters' names are in all caps. ASCII table != text in a document such as a book or manual page. K&R uses "null character" in fact. There is a split in the manpages that does favor NUL over nul IIRC, but just because something is common doesn't mean it is right. :) It seems from the K&R example that both are wrong in fact. As Garrett points out, NULL is a C-specific pointer value as well (nil anyone?). It would seem that "null pointer" and "null character" are what should be used in texts. -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ PGP Key: http://www.baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
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