Hi Alex, At 2022-08-20T01:28:04+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > > -capability to create and intialize an fanotify group with limited functionality. > > +capability to create and initialize an fanotify group with limited functionality. > > should this be 'a fanotify' instead of 'an fanotify'? Answering this requires people to document how the function/feature name is supposed to be pronounced. Use "an" if what follows is a vowel sound. Spelling is not a determining factor. Unfortunately it is a tradition in Unix culture not to make pronouciation of its lexicon of (historically) hermetically terse identifier lexicon clear, so that the names of commands and functions that are well known enough to come up in conversation at conventions can be used a shibboleth to distinguish self-taught users and programmers (and clueless sales personnel and would-be entrepreneurs) from "authentic" Unix experts who underwent a proper apprenticeship, and through a chain of masters, can trace their tutelage to a luminary at the Bell Labs CSRC or UC Berkeley CSRG--someone with a name to be spoken in hushed tones like "Ritchie" or "Joy". Does "troff" have one syllable or two? Does one refer to the text editors as "ee-dee" and "vee-eye" or as if they were English diminutive names "Ed" and "Vi"? One set of choices will mark you as a person who _might_ be worth conversing with; the other will get you a short look down a long nose and the cold shoulder. We've got gates to keep. Both Unix and the Linux kernel, the latter particularly in its development model, were levelling technologies. They brought better OS technology and programming environments to much larger groups of people than had enjoyed them before. But it is a sadly recurring theme of human history that as soon as some levelling process occurs, a certain type of person promptly moves in to restore a guild, caste, or other hierarchical social ordering that they are more comfortable with. If you can't get an authoritative answer from a principal author of the fanotify API, I suggest reading the term as "eff-A-notify"; this will then be implicitly documented by your choice of the article "an". It doesn't have anything to do with fans or the fourth degree of the major scale, after all. Regards, Branden
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