Re: [PATCH v2] sequencer.c: fix and unify error messages in rearrange_squash()

From: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
Date: Oct 16, 2017, 12:36 UTC
Message-ID: <17346CCF8DEF41E790C96248408E07D2@PhilipOakley>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1.1710161331290.40514@virtualbox>

From: "Johannes Schindelin" <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>

Show 20 quoted lines

> On Mon, 16 Oct 2017, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> Ralf Thielow <ralf.thielow@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > When the write opertion fails, we write that we could
>> > not read. Change the error message to match the operation
>> > and remove the full stop at the end.
>> >
>> > When ftruncate() fails, we write that we couldn't finish
>> > the operation on the todo file. It is more accurate to write
>> > that we couldn't truncate as we do in other calls of ftruncate().
>>
>> Wouldn't it be more accurate to say we couldn't ftruncate, though?
>
> This is an end-user facing error message, right? Should we not let users
> who are happily oblivious of POSIX nomenclature remain happily oblivious?
>
> In other words, I would be finer with "truncate" than with "ftruncate...
> wait, huh? Is that even English?"
>

Hi, 'Truncate' is real English, but it is not that common in normal usage.

My dictionary suggests that it means 'cut off at the tip' such as a truncated cone. However the thesaurus is far more relaxed about the common idioms that truncate at the tail such as: clip, crop, cut short, trim, abbreviate, curtail, etc.

So perhaps "could not trim '%s'".

-- Philip