bug#14976: [patch] use semicolons in option descriptions, not periods

[Pádraig Brady]

On 08/03/2013 11:33 AM, Benno Schulenberg wrote:
> 
> Hello Pádraig,
> 
> On Fri, Aug 2, 2013, at 10:11, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>> On 08/01/2013 08:56 PM, Benno Schulenberg wrote:
>>> A semicolon is a sentence separator too; it just avoids the need for
>>> a capital starter letter and a finishing period.
>>
>> Well generally there should be some tenuous relationship
>> between the ; delimited "sentences"
> 
> True.  But as the phrases all describe aspects of the same option,
> there is in my opinion always some relationship between them,
> which could be expressed with "where" or "however" or something.
> 
> Attached patch does some more semicolon substitutions, of periods
> I overlooked the first time.  It also does more indentation adjustments,
> and adds some parentheses around equivalent short options for clarity.

All that looks good.

> It also removes the phrase "and do not dereference symbolic links" from
> the 'ls -d' option, because 1) to be correct it would have to add "unless
> -H or -L etcera", but such precision is something for the manual; 2) the
> phrase is not given for -F nor -l either, for which it is also valid.

So the change is:

 -  -d, --directory            list directory entries instead of contents,
 -                               and do not dereference symbolic links
 +  -d, --directory            list just names of directories, not their 
contents

So I was wondering why that clarification was added.
I guess that it's obvious from the output for -l and -F
that the symlink is being operated on:

 $ ls -iF lsrc
 4202161 lsrc@
 $ ls -il lsrc
 4202161 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 ... lsrc -> src

whereas with -d it's not:

 $ ls -id lsrc
 4202161 lsrc

Also I don't like the "just names" in the new description as
it might imply that it overrides -l or something.
So I was thinking instead to change to:

    -d, --directory            list directory entries instead of contents,
 -                               and do not dereference symbolic links
 +                               and by default do not dereference symlinks

thanks!
Pádraig.