Hi Alex, On Wed, 23 Dec 2020 at 20:03, Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Remove "." at the end of sentence fragments/short single sentences > in comments. See: c2e81ff9641a7743b1f47cbf4fcf899c391df77f. > > $ sed -i '/[^.]\. \*\//s%\. \*/% */%' man?/* > > Signed-off-by: Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> There is probably still a bit of inconsistency in the pages, But, your change removes some periods what really should be present. For example: > --- a/man2/clone.2 > +++ b/man2/clone.2 > @@ -1843,7 +1843,7 @@ childFunc(void *arg) > > /* Keep the namespace open for a while, by sleeping. > This allows some experimentation\-\-for example, another > - process might join the namespace. */ > + process might join the namespace */ > > sleep(200); > > @@ -1887,7 +1887,7 @@ main(int argc, char *argv[]) > sleep(1); /* Give child time to change its hostname */ > > /* Display hostname in parent\(aqs UTS namespace. This will be > - different from hostname in child\(aqs UTS namespace. */ > + different from hostname in child\(aqs UTS namespace */ Here are a couple of cases where the comment contains two sentences, but the change removes the period from the second sentence. That's definitely not right. My general philosophy is complete sentences in comments should be terminated by periods. In sentence fragments, especially for tag comments (i.e., comment on same line as the code), I'm inclined to omit the period. And there are doubtless inconsistencies in existing pages (and grey areas). Commit c2e81ff964 was intended to clean up some of the most obvious cases. I've made a few more commits now to bring more consistency. (I think Branden's suggestion that complete sentences should generally always be punctuated is true.) And I've added some notes to man-pages(7). See commits f18f9c409...46b20ca1b Thanks, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
