Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:40:37 -0400 From: David Schultz <das@FreeBSD.ORG> To: Ed Schouten <ed@80386.nl> Cc: FreeBSD Standards <freebsd-standards@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Ambiguous sentence in POSIX onlinepubs 11.1.11 Message-ID: <20080328184037.GA65795@zim.MIT.EDU> In-Reply-To: <20080328130357.GC51074@hoeg.nl> References: <20080328130357.GC51074@hoeg.nl>
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On Fri, Mar 28, 2008, Ed Schouten wrote: > The last couple of days I've been reading the POSIX onlinepubs now and > then to find out how my new mpsafe TTY implementation conforms to POSIX. > > In section 11.1.11, there is the following sentence: > > "The last process to close a terminal device file shall cause > any output to be sent to the device and any input to be > discarded." > > This sentence is quite ambiguous. It could mean: > > "The last process to close a terminal device file shall cause > any output to be sent to the device, [but] any input to be > discarded." > > but it could also mean: > > "The last process to close a terminal device file shall cause > any output [which still has] to be sent to the device and any > input to be discarded." I doubt that even the most incoherent standards author would deliberately use "to" as a participle, infinitive, AND preposition, all in the same sentence, so I'd go with the first interpretation. That's also the interpretation that makes more sense, right?
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