On Thu, Aug 8, 2024 at 7:59 AM Vincent Lefevre <vincent@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > FYI, +-0 could be interpreted by the reader as in C, where a unary > minus operator is applied, then a unary plus operator. And about +/-0, > the "/" is already used a the division operator, so that this doesn't > help parsing. It helps *some*, in that "/" can't be a unary operator, so it signals to the reader that +/-0 isn't a C expression. It also helps that "+/-" has been used in other contexts where ± is unavailable, so some readers might already be familiar with it. The latter point argues in favor of Branden's idea to change groff's fallback from +- to +/-. > So ideally, the fallback for "±0" should be "+0 or -0", which is > much more readable and less ambiguous than "+-0" or "+/-0". That is a clearer phrasing, but unfortunately, there's no way to make that transformation an automatic fallback in the man macros (unless Tadziu swoops in to prove me wrong); the whole phrase would have to be specifically coded that way in the individual page--something that, aside from being discouraged in man pages, is less reliable than one might hope (http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?65403#comment0). > Anyway, currently, for consistency, this should be "+0 or -0", > as this is already used: ...which luckily makes all the above moot.
