On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 1:46 PM, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) <mtk.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 18 October 2017 at 17:07, Carlos O'Donell <carlos@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >>> pthread_spin_trylock() can fail with the following errors: >>> >>> EBUSY The spin lock is currently locked by another thread. >> >> I always find the 'can fail' wording a bit wishy-washy for my tastes >> and prefer: 'shall fail', along with a statement that defines the >> conditions for failure. I say this only because English is not as >> precise as I'd like so using 'shall' instead of 'can' makes this >> failure mode clearer, indicating to the reader that it will happen >> (here it's a bit obvious from the semantics of the function, since >> otherwise trylock would be useless). > > Changed to "shall fail" (but this is not the only page with that problem :-} ). I meant to reply earlier. This is a pet English grammar peeve of mine: "shall" is a _directive_. Specifications use it because they are directing the implementors to make things happen, but in documentation aimed at people _using_ an interface, the appropriate word is "will". The function _will_ fail and set errno under the following conditions yada yada. That's what it does. You, the reader of this manpage, do not have to do anything to make that happen. zw -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-man" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
