[C PATCH]: tidy some code

Nicola Pero nicola@brainstorm.co.uk
Wed Nov 27 19:00:00 GMT 2002


> >Not here because if you look at the diagnostic message carefully, it
> >isn't saying
> >
> >     structure '%s'
> >
> >nor
> >
> >    struct '%s'
> >
> >but
> >
> >    'struct %s'
> >
> >that is keyword struct is part of the type-name.  Translating 'struct'
> >in this specific case is just not translating because it is not a
> >noun: it is used to form a type-name.
> 
> What you may have missed is that some languages change the word for 'of' 
> based on the gender of the noun following. If 'of' cares about the gender 
> of its target, then
> 
> of 'struct %s'
> 
> may have a different 'of' than
> 
> of 'union %s'
> 
> does.

Speaking of cans of worms, the article/preposition before a word can
depend not only on grammar, but also just on the word first
letters/sounds.

That might happen a lot in strange languages ... for any
grammatical/spelling perversion you can think of, there exists a natural
language implementing it :-)

But it happens even in English - you say "a 'struct T'", but you say "an
'enum F'" (ok - the example might be a bit unnatural, but it's not easy to
find English examples of this stuff)

So the error message

That was a really poor place to declare a '%s'

might need to have two separate messages even in English, one if %s is
'struct xxx', and another one if %s is 'enum yyy' ...

Again, it's true that 'struct xxx' and 'enum yyy' are not English words,
but when you put them into an English sentence, you then have the
pronounce the sentence somewhat ... which might require adjustments to the
other words in the message.




More information about the Gcc-patches mailing list