Re: [PATCH] rcu: Fix various typos in comments

Paul E. McKenney
2021-03-23T16:21:32Z

On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 12:17:53PM +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>
> * Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> > > > * there are no read-side primitives analogous to rcu_read_lock() and
> > > > * rcu_read_unlock() because this primitive is intended to determine
> > > > * that all tasks have passed through a safe state, not so much for
> > > > - * data-strcuture synchronization.
> > > > + * data-structure synchronization.
> > > > *
> > >
> > > The "hyphen" in the middle of the word "data structure" is required or keeping by
> > > convention or has some significance?
> >
> > Yes, this is one of many peculiarities of English, and an optional one
> > at that. English is not a block-structured language, so grouping can
> > be ambiguous. Is is "(data structure) synchronization" or is it instead
> > "data (structure synchronization)"? The default is the latter, and
> > the hyphen indicates the former. In this case, the former is intended,
> > hence the hyphen.
>
> The other point is that there are a *lot* of hyphen variations in the
> kernel, and unless the primary author or maintainer is iterating the
> text would be insane to categorize them as 'typos' and create churn to
> 'fix' them...
>
> 'data-structure' or 'datastructure' are both perfectly readable, just
> like 'fast-path' or 'fastpath', 'cache-miss' or 'cachemiss' and a
> million other examples.

Agreed. Plus even though "data structure initialization" would look
funny to me, I would know what was meant. And even automated systems
that fix typos have some chance of creating other typos, as I have
recently had considerably experience with. ;-)

Thanx, Paul