docs/176806: recv(2) man page grammatical fixes

[Jeremy Chadwick]

The following reply was made to PR docs/176806; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Jeremy Chadwick <jdc at koitsu.org>
To: Peter Pentchev <roam at ringlet.net>
Cc: bug-followup at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: docs/176806: recv(2) man page grammatical fixes
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 10:52:01 -0700

 On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 04:12:05PM +0200, Peter Pentchev wrote:
 > On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 12:20:13AM -0800, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
 > > 
 > > >Number:         176806
 > > >Category:       docs
 > > >Synopsis:       recv(2) man page grammatical fixes
 > [snip]
 > > >Description:
 > > 	recv(2) has the following description for EAGAIN:
 > > 
 > >   [EAGAIN]           The socket is marked non-blocking, and the receive
 > >                      operation would block, or a receive timeout had been
 > >                      set, and the timeout expired before data were
 > >                      received.
 > > 
 > > 	Improper use of commas make the sentence difficult to comprehend,
 > > 	and the word "were" should be "was".
 > 
 > Hmm, are you really sure about the "were" part?  I think it may have
 > been used on purpose to indicate a counterfactual conditional - data
 > *was not* received, although it was supposed (expected) to be.
 
 This is actually a good question and I appreciate you bringing it up.
 
 The more I worked on this, the more I kept pondering the possibility of
 "were" being correct in this context.  Quite often if you repeat a
 sentence over and over you start to think it's grammatically correct
 when it might not be.  English, sigh...
 
 An itemised list of what went through my head:
 
 - Singular vs. plural: "data" in this context is singular (yes, even
 though there may be multiple bytes of data :-) ), not plural.  We tend
 to use "was" when referencing a single thing, and "were" when
 referencing multiple things,
 
 - Counterfactual condition: unsure if this applies here.  Use of the
 word "before" might play a role, but I'm not entirely sure.  Compound
 sentences can make this difficult (and also explains why removal of said
 commas is necessary),
 
 - English is an awful language often ridden with exceptions to the rule.
 With was/were, there are some cases where both forms are grammatically
 correct (based on the speaker's education level) -- and "were" is often
 preferred in this case,
 
 - Most of the online resources I've read on this matter continually
 cite "simple" sentence examples; "If I (was|were) a dog" does not apply,
 for example, because the sentence starts with the word "if".  That is
 not the case here -- the condition is known (the timeout was reached
 before any I/O arrived on the fd/socket).
 
 This may be one inquire about at english.stackexchange.com.  I would be
 very interested to know what's grammatically correct here, or if this is
 one of those nuance cases where "was" *or* "were" can be used.
 
 -- 
 | Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at koitsu.org |
 | UNIX Systems Administrator                http://jdc.koitsu.org/ |
 | Mountain View, CA, US                                            |
 | Making life hard for others since 1977.             PGP 4BD6C0CB |