From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from smtp.kernel.org (aws-us-west-2-korg-mail-1.web.codeaurora.org [10.30.226.201]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 8981B1A28A for ; Mon, 27 Nov 2023 15:08:30 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=kernel.org header.i=@kernel.org header.b="km/q5vAQ" Received: by smtp.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 955D7C433C7; Mon, 27 Nov 2023 15:08:28 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple; d=kernel.org; s=k20201202; t=1701097710; bh=+XMEo0uUb00xZ5sl57FJKNt3NGZs/1KrrH7Fth/hbtQ=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:References:In-Reply-To:From; b=km/q5vAQ9ynPhOT4cOG/ZIPi811kpn0i4HTPzyH0FsfgLNaWogzJ+7RsBVTnQctSm HCvfFvzSRtrZEbB/czMSG9p+/8wxQbKObnPeUYKo19VVGEwiGtGbM+jEeDSIyMnu6c Z9/VCEB2ISy2VfI2gt6LW1XyTKukZNR9p+t2pkF8+L5QQgFpbvW3x8vUNyD2PoXtX0 MzJhjS2Sim6Cn8g+35R9/sy7XxEbSigC4fL6zYMiPB67Ma2zfTNuAf4meJsmynWu91 loGg2CYbC0L5x0kG6ppLanj44un+HlgmOAXo2/lO5B3+gGjZO5WgWpfYOEqZpW1aDO i8SQki/iLHGTg== Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 16:08:17 +0100 From: Alejandro Colomar To: Zack Weinberg Cc: Jonny Grant , Paul Eggert , Carlos O'Donell , GNU libc development , 'linux-man' Subject: Re: catenate vs concatenate (was: strncpy clarify result may not be null terminated) Message-ID: References: <16cc15a4-cfc0-49f4-9ebf-ecf0901700ce@app.fastmail.com> <8ebee0fc-1e77-41d9-8feb-8c1083a30a93@cs.ucla.edu> <4a9a3209-ad1f-44be-b0bf-bba23a9cb085@app.fastmail.com> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-man@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha512; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="AlmLHWOdid9DBXoa" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4a9a3209-ad1f-44be-b0bf-bba23a9cb085@app.fastmail.com> --AlmLHWOdid9DBXoa Content-Type: text/plain; protected-headers=v1; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 16:08:17 +0100 From: Alejandro Colomar To: Zack Weinberg Cc: Jonny Grant , Paul Eggert , Carlos O'Donell , GNU libc development , 'linux-man' Subject: Re: catenate vs concatenate (was: strncpy clarify result may not be null terminated) Hi Zack, On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 09:33:56AM -0500, Zack Weinberg wrote: > [all attribution deleted because it was so tangled I couldn't make > sense of it] >=20 > >> Rather than "catenation", in my experience "concatenation" is the > >> common term The above was Jonny Grant. > > We began fighting this pomposity before v7. There has only been > > backsliding since. "Catenate" is crisper, means the same thing, The above was Doug McIlroy. > [English pedant mode on] >=20 > "Concatenate" is the correct term; "catenate" means something completely > different, probably "hang between two posts like a chain". You can't > chop prefixes off a Latinate word and have it still mean the same thing. [Latin pedant mode on] contatenate comes from the Latin concatenare. The prefix "con-" means "join", "together", and "catena" means "chain". catenate comes from the Latin catenare, which AFAICS, seems a synonym. It just drops the redundant "con-" prefix, since "catena" already implies it. English isn't as propense as other Latin languages to have such synonyms where one of them simply adds a redundant prefix or suffix, but Catalan or Spanish for example have several such cases. [Latin pedant mode off] > [English pedant mode off] >=20 > Also, and much more importantly, "concatenate" is used at least 100x > more often than "catenate" in modern English, and that means it's the > word that a randomly selected reader of the manpages is more likely to > know, and, therefore, the word that the manpages should be using. >=20 > https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=3Dconcatenate%2Ccatenate&ye= ar_start=3D1800&year_end=3D2019&corpus=3Den-2019&smoothing=3D3 Heh, Paul sent a patch for changing it to append, which I applied, since it reads better, even if it removes the mnemonics of cat for catenate. :) Cheers, Alex --=20 --AlmLHWOdid9DBXoa Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAABCgAdFiEE6jqH8KTroDDkXfJAnowa+77/2zIFAmVksOEACgkQnowa+77/ 2zKVNg/+PYsPg/zcYy32/qa0Yqa3QE7sLNVKHkifsyGTmTduxfKn/b65OuwO+cJj /5rMndIAmyRiLDZLzEFb5hXCS1StaATwuuScKltgwtVo7qVUNv0rjPz1E8uq6CEs NM6Vy6d6iIarecXDYPf5h1Ek9ySS7Q34wVW5TCg+91mEWkR0xMIgqjkQK9pZyshO L7St6e6YvAy3xa1DNFNKIkNhK6XL4I+Hc4IkdKvb87MSF9qZKDxNGxmE7zzYELpY aipBRHwNFiBoyVmYYyJg6bfSVGkwiUq5DeUXNfEn6cosBWEPVYZc2k+Cyrqi/gi/ XJTHmKqrZ+poeSooB3SRC8cnypomYsQdUHvu2VSXjsUMSWJXlq9y78Rl5wM/U19z +Epk2QthN4fWcR68TpwYCXmKS7w/zJhQWWeoWpFfqYP+09Y4FbEwJWXt4I1gxujf juamVorHSJYoaXN2Wtpz+sUW2+y0v7QepgmukYkC6KBEKc203ThjfeXXdTazAjlW ZjG4BM7cU1vF0BABOkycMOol/IPclsaPnvAHu7eoMhk03d6iMnO3jkrHMTbMbXLU 1A/VbFEh+oMy+c68sJ9wixB1+0LavXVViI4PVHxqGRpybxrvj/YFaTZAZt2R5JK5 3wAuylrA+QPaRU24VjZ/LhJ4OYBiZUsY79cL7ZZaT+OEkYSmBok= =s0BC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --AlmLHWOdid9DBXoa--