From: Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl>
To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Subject: Re: Trailing periods in kernel messages
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:43:33 +0100
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Cc: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org>, Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>,
       Li Zefan <lizf@cn.fujitsu.com>,
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       Joel Schopp <jschopp@austin.ibm.com>
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On Thursday 20 December 2007, Alan Cox wrote:
> The kernel printk messages are sentences.

I'm afraid that I completely and utterly disagree. Kernel messages are _not_ 
sentences. The vast majority is not well-formed and does not contain any of 
the elements that are required for a proper sentence.

The most kernel messages can be compared to is a rather diverse and sloppy 
enumeration. And enumerations follow completely different rules than 
sentences. It can better be characterized as a "semi-random sequence of 
context-sensitive technical messages".

IMHO the existing rule that "Kernel messages do not have to be terminated 
with a period." is completely justified, though it does need some minor 
clarification on the cases in which proper punctuation _should_ be 
followed.
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