[PATCH] Pointlessly pedantic comments patch

Arthur J. O'Dwyer

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May 13, 2006, 11:19:15 PM5/13/06

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Yes, it's finally here! The long-awaited, utterly pointless patch for
NetHack 3.4.3 that fixes all those annoying spelling mistakes in the
source code!

This 237-kilobyte(!) unified diff doesn't have /any/ in-game effects.
All it does is let source divers see that "acknowledgments" is spelled
correctly; the Amulet is never referred to as "the amulet"; commas
are never used in place of semicolons, or periods in place of question
marks; and so on.

http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~ajo/free-software/nethack/comment343.diff

The comments are still in a mix of British and American English,
and I exercised editorial judgment in replacing "eg." with "e.g.," and
dealing with other obviously space-saving abbreviations.
I noticed (at least) one place in include/unixconf.h where the source
code still referred to "Hack" instead of "NetHack". And speaking of
configuration headers, what's the deal with "vaxcrtl.h"? It certainly
/looks/ like a misspelling of "vaxctrl.h", as in "control", but Google
says it's not. What /does/ it stand for, then?

Anyway, I expect nobody will ever install this patch, but at least
now I can say I've read all the comments in the NetHack source code. :)

-Arthur
--
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~ajo/free-software/free-software.html

Adam Thornton

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May 14, 2006, 12:06:02 AM5/14/06

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In article <Pine.LNX.4.60-041....@unix40.andrew.cmu.edu>,

Arthur J. O'Dwyer <ajon...@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>And speaking of
>configuration headers, what's the deal with "vaxcrtl.h"? It certainly
>/looks/ like a misspelling of "vaxctrl.h", as in "control", but Google
>says it's not. What /does/ it stand for, then?

"VAX C Runtime Library" would be my guess.

Adam

Grett...@gmail.com

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May 14, 2006, 1:39:08 AM5/14/06

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Arthur J. O'Dwyer wrote:
> Yes, it's finally here! The long-awaited, utterly pointless patch for
> NetHack 3.4.3 that fixes all those annoying spelling mistakes in the
> source code!

Huzzah! I salute you. :-)

Gretta

bebing

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May 14, 2006, 11:41:04 AM5/14/06

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My uneducated guess: VAX CRT Library, CRT being Cathode Ray Tube.

Michael Allison

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May 14, 2006, 12:00:59 PM5/14/06

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Arthur J. O'Dwyer wrote:
>

> Yes, it's finally here! The long-awaited, utterly pointless patch for
> NetHack 3.4.3 that fixes all those annoying spelling mistakes in the
> source code!

Your vision.c bands turn comments into invalid code.

> http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~ajo/free-software/nethack/comment343.diff

Arthur J. O'Dwyer

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May 14, 2006, 4:58:58 PM5/14/06

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On Sun, 14 May 2006, Michael Allison wrote:
> Arthur J. O'Dwyer wrote:
>>
>> Yes, it's finally here! The long-awaited, utterly pointless patch for
>> NetHack 3.4.3 that fixes all those annoying spelling mistakes in the
>> source code!
>
> Your vision.c bands turn comments into invalid code.

Hmm. Yes. Well. --And I missed a typo in that file, too.
Fixed now, and actually tested via 'make'.
Hope it works.

>> http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~ajo/free-software/nethack/comment343.diff

-Arthur

Dylan O'Donnell

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May 16, 2006, 5:54:35 AM5/16/06

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"Arthur J. O'Dwyer" <ajon...@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
> This 237-kilobyte(!) unified diff doesn't have /any/ in-game effects.
> All it does is let source divers see that "acknowledgments" is spelled

> correctly; [...]

> The comments are still in a mix of British and American English,

If you're happy for that to be the case, why did you change
'acknowledgements' to the American spelling?

--
: Dylan O'Donnell http://www.spod-central.org/~psmith/ :
: "What are they doing at night in the park? :
: Think of them waddling about in the dark..." :
: -- Alan Moore, "March of the Sinister Ducks" :