From: "Johannes Schindelin" <johannes.schinde...@gmx.de>
On Mon, 16 Oct 2017, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Ralf Thielow <ralf.thie...@gmail.com> writes:

> When the write opertion fails, we write that we could
> not read. Change the error message to match the operation
> and remove the full stop at the end.
>
> When ftruncate() fails, we write that we couldn't finish
> the operation on the todo file. It is more accurate to write
> that we couldn't truncate as we do in other calls of ftruncate().

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say we couldn't ftruncate, though?

This is an end-user facing error message, right? Should we not let users
who are happily oblivious of POSIX nomenclature remain happily oblivious?

In other words, I would be finer with "truncate" than with "ftruncate...
wait, huh? Is that even English?"

Hi, 'Truncate' is real English, but it is not that common in normal usage.

My dictionary suggests that it means 'cut off at the tip' such as a truncated cone. However the thesaurus is far more relaxed about the common idioms that truncate at the tail such as: clip, crop, cut short, trim, abbreviate, curtail, etc.

So perhaps "could not trim '%s'".

--
Philip

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