Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] slirp: Fix spelling in comment (enought -> enough, insure -> ensure)

[Stefan Weil <sw@weilnetz.de>]

Am 27.09.2012 21:13, schrieb Eric Blake:
> On 09/27/2012 12:57 PM, Stefan Weil wrote:
>> Signed-off-by: Stefan Weil<sw@weilnetz.de>
>> ---
>>
>> As a non native speaker, I feel that 'ensure' is better here than 'insure'.
>> Could a native speaker please confirm that?
>
> As a US speaker, I've seen both words used interchangeably.  I also
> checked dictionary.com, where both words imply a guarantee, but 'insure'
> has a connotation of a guarantee against loss (think insurance policy)
> while 'ensure' tends to be used in most other situations.  That is, I am
> in favor of this spelling change for connotation reasons.  But as Peter
> pointed out, the sentence has more problems than just a spelling choice.
>
>> - * For the error advice packets must first insure that the
>> - * packet is large enought to contain the returned ip header.
>> + * For the error advice packets must first ensure that the
>> + * packet is large enough to contain the returned ip header.
>>    * Only then can we do the check to see if 64 bits of packet
>>    * data have been returned, since we need to check the returned
>>    * ip header length.

Thanks for your and Peter's annotations.

It looks like these lines of comment are much older than QEMU.
I found code from 1995 which already contains them.

They are spread in BSD, Apple and Microsoft code,
so maybe we should add a comment which marks them
as a historic artefact which must be preserved :-)

I might also try to improve that sentence by adding 'we':

+ * For the error advice packets we must first ensure that the
+ * packet is large enough to contain the returned ip header.


or

+ * For the error advice packets we must first ensure that
+ * they are large enough to contain the returned ip header.

ICMP_ADVLENMIN seems to be the minimum length which meaningful
'error advice packets' must have.

Regards

Stefan