On Sun Jan 16 17:16:53 2011, WYANT wrote:
Show quoted text> Proposed documentation tweak committed as SVN revision 13602.
>
> Tom Wyant
Proposed (and accepted?) tweak:
Returns a true value if any item in LIST meets the criterion given
through BLOCK.
<CODE FRAG>
Returns true if LIST is empty. Returns false otherwise.
The proposed documentation tweak makes the function sound like it *only*
tests the length of the list. (Linguistically, I think it's a dangling
"otherwise" clause. Does it relate to the previous sentence or the one
above the code fragment?)
I'd suggest:
Returns false otherwise, or true if LIST is empty.
Heck... that's confusing, too.
How 'bout a final line like:
Returns false otherwise (unless LIST is empty, in which case it
returns true).
This final sentence is more parallel with other sentence structures. I
think it's very important to keep parallel sentence structure. The
proposed solution does not maintain this parallel structure. Nor does
my first suggestion. The final suggestion is (mostly) parallel, but the
difference in structure points out a difference in behavior, not merely
a difference in wording.
My $0.02 - hope it helps.
