docs/188786: Bug in inet(3) man page (inet_aton())

[Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)]

On 05/23/2014 04:47 AM, Benjamin Kaduk wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> 
> Sorry it took me so long to reply.  I had a lot of catching up to do after 
> BSDCan...
> 
> On Sat, 17 May 2014, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote:
> 
>> I think that what makes the page a little confusing is that it uses
>> both terms "Internet address" and "network address" without making it
>> clear that they are synonymous (and thus leaving the potential for the
>> reader to think they are not). This might not normally be problematic,
>> but given that the page is also talking about the 'network' and 'host'
>> components of the address, there is scope for confusion. Not a big
>> thing, I guess, but FWIW that's the confusion that I tried to avoid in
>> the Linux man page by using the term "binary address"; see
>> http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/inet.3.html#DESCRIPTION
> 
> I see how there could be confusion, and we could probably do better.
> I'll put taking a look at this man page in general on my todo list, but 
> leave this PR cloesd for now.
> (I do remember that a lot of the functional parts of classful addressing 
> have actually been removed from FreeBSD, but not whether this part in 
> particular was removed.  I'll have to check.)

Okay.

> Thanks again for the submission, it's always good to get suggestions.

You're welcome. Thanks for following up, Ben.

Cheers,

Michael




-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/