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Re: Manual style: "non-zero" vs "nonzero"
- To: Russ Allbery <rra at stanford dot edu>
- Subject: Re: Manual style: "non-zero" vs "nonzero"
- From: "Joseph S. Myers" <jsm28 at cam dot ac dot uk>
- Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 09:11:09 +0100 (BST)
- cc: <gcc-patches at gcc dot gnu dot org>
On 8 Oct 2001, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Brad Lucier <lucier@math.purdue.edu> writes:
>
> > Re:
> >> In the GCC manuals, which of the spellings "nonzero" and "non-zero" should
> >> be used? At present both are.
>
> > Mathematics journals definitely prefer "nonzero" (no hyphen).
>
> The 1989 OED prefers non-zero (as in it has an entry for that and has no
> entry for nonzero), but it may be out of date. Nonzero without a hyphen
> does appear in the current Merriam-Webster.
Given the comments here and Knuth's comments at
<URL:http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html> which give
"non-zero" the same obsolescence as "soft-ware", I propose the
following patch. OK to commit?
2001-10-09 Joseph S. Myers <jsm28@cam.ac.uk>
* doc/gcc.texi: Document preference for "nonzero" over "non-zero".
--- gcc.texi.orig Sun Oct 7 17:53:35 2001
+++ gcc.texi Tue Oct 9 08:03:27 2001
@@ -55,6 +55,7 @@
@c marked up with @command, for the commands for compilation when the
@c emphasis is on those; "GNU C" and "GNU C++" for language dialects;
@c and try to avoid the older term "GNU CC".
+@c - "nonzero" rather than "non-zero".
@c - "@code{NULL}" rather than "NULL".
@c - "Objective-C" rather than "Objective C".
--
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk