Re: [PATCH] doc: State coding guideline for error message punctuation

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jun 17, 2014, 09:37 UTC
Message-ID: <20140617093759.GA6267@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <1402923357-3788-2-git-send-email-philipoakley@iee.org>

On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 01:55:57PM +0100, Philip Oakley wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> +Error Messages
> +
> + - We typically do not end error messages with a full stop. While
> +   we've been rather inconsistent in the past, these days we mostly
> +   settle on no punctuation.

Unlike Junio, I do not mind spelling out guidance for error messages. However, I do not think the second sentence is adding anything here (everything in CodingGuidelines is subject to "we did not always do it this way, but this is the preferred way now"). So I'd drop it.

And then add in more guidance. Besides "no full stop", probably:

  1. do not capitalize ("unable to open %s", not "Unable to open %s"

  2. maybe something on sentence structure / ordering? We tend to prefer
     "cannot open 'foo': No such file or directory" to "foo: cannot
     open: No such file or directory".

Perhaps there are others (we do not have to be exhaustive, but it makes sense to think for a moment while we are here).

-Peff