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

Ingo Molnar
2021-03-23T11:18:31Z

* 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.

Thanks,

Ingo