Richard Troy wrote: > > On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Bruce Momjian wrote: > > From: Bruce Momjian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Tom Lane wrote: > > > 3606c3606 > > > < errmsg("aggregate function calls cannot be > > > nested"))); > > > --- > > > > errmsg("aggregate function calls may not be > > > > nested"))); > > > > > > I don't think that this is an improvement, or even correct English. > > > > > > You have changed a message that states that an action is logically > > > impossible into one that implies we are arbitrarily refusing to let > > > the user do something that *could* be done, if only we'd let him. > > > > > > There is relevant material in the message style guidelines, section > > > 45.3.8: it says that "cannot open file "%s" ... indicates that the > > > functionality of opening the named file does not exist at all in the > > > program, or that it's conceptually impossible." > > > > Uh, I think you might be reading the diff backwards. The current CVS > > wording is "cannot". > > No, Bruce, he got it exactly right: "cannot" indicates, as Tom put it, > "logical impossibility," whereas "may not" suggests that something could > happen but it's being prevented. His parsing of the english was spot-on.
Right, but the changes was from "may not" (permission) to "cannot" (logical impossibility), which I think is what he wanted. Is there an open source grammar award we can win? :-) -- Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly