Re: [PATCH v9 5/5] Speed up log -L... -M

[Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 5:04 AM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 06:58:48AM +0100, Thomas Rast wrote:
>> Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com> writes:
>> > On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 8:52 AM, Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch> wrote:
>> >> This is a bit hacky and should really be replaced by equivalent
>> >> support in --follow, and just using that.  However, in the meantime it
>> >
>> > s/using/use/
>>
>> I'm not a native speaker, but I really think 'using' is more correct
>> here.
>
> Cannot...resist...grammar discussion.
>
> I think you are both potentially right.
>
> You might consider the two items "equivalent support" and "using that"
> to be two noun phrases that are objects of the preposition "by", and
> that the writer simply omits the second "by" after the "and". In which
> case you are making a noun phrase from a verb phrase, and would want to
> use the gerund form "using".  And the sentence, simplifying out some
> modifiers and adding the missing "by" (which is fine to omit, but the
> parts of speech become much clearer with it there), looks like:
>
>   ...should be replaced by equivalent support, and by using that.
>
> However, you could also argue that the final clause is a second verb
> phrase for "this should" which just omits the extra "should" (which is
> also OK in a list. In which case "use" acts as a verb, and parses as:
>
>   ...should be replaced by equivalent support, and this should just use
>   that.
>
> So I think it is correct either way, and though it parses slightly
> differently, the overall meaning is the same.
>
> Phew. Totally not worth that much discussion, but for some reason I find
> these sorts of ambiguous language cases interesting.

Wishing to avoid bike-shedding the commit message, I suggested
s/using/use/ as a minor change to help clarify the grammar a bit.
However, perhaps it could be rephrased as:

  This is a bit hacky and should really be replaced by equivalent
  support in --follow, which can then be employed instead.

-- ES