Re: CVS commit: src/bin/dd

["Ian D. Leroux" <idleroux%fastmail.fm@localhost>]

On Mon, 26 Jan 2026 14:08:39 +0300 Valery Ushakov <uwe%stderr.spb.ru@localhost>
wrote:
> Please, can a native speaker massage the text for `oflag`:
> 
>   The default value is creat, which must be explicitly added in oflag
>   if this option is used in order to output to a nonexistent file
> 
> It is just too damn confusing to parse right on the first try.  Spare
> a thought for the proverbial despearate sysadmin fixing an emergency
> at 3am.
> 
> The porblem, I guess is that the man page seems to be using "operand"
> for `foo=...` and "option" for values in the "..." part of an operand
> and here "this option" seems to refer to oflag= (and should be "this
> operand"), not to the "creat" (the only possible referent for "this"
> if "option" in "this option" is read consistently with the rest of the
> manpage).

How about:

"The default value is creat. If the oflag operand is used, the creat
flag must be included explicitly when writing output to a nonexistent
file."

-- IDL