Re: $argc variable

[Andrew STUBBS <andrew.stubbs@st.com>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Btw, Andrew, why do you post patches to gdb@sources.redhat.com, rather
> than to gdb-patches@ ?  The latter is the right place.

I post patches to gdb-patches@ and other messages to gdb@ which, in this 
case, has a patch as a follow up. Should I switch list as soon as I have 
a patch? That seems a little disconnected to me, but I see your point. I 
originally posted the new options I had to gdb@ because I thought they 
might be a little more controversial - I also called them RFC.

>>In the documentation I changed a '@var' to '@code' because @var makes it 
>>upper case in the info and I thought that misleading.
> 
> 
> Upper case is not the problem: makeinfo produces an uppercase word
> from @var since time immemoriam, so anyone who's used to read Info
> manuals is already used to that.

I would respectfully suggest that manuals should be written for those 
that do NOT know what they are doing. However, as you say, using 
upper-case for non-literal text is fine and I understand that and if 
users try to type it then there are bigger problems than case.

> The problem here is that it's simply wrong to use @var in this case,
> because $arg0 etc. are literal strings, to be used verbatim in the
> actual script, not placeholders that stand for something else.  So
> your change is correct, although for the wrong reasons. ;-)

Well, I would have been happy with the wrong mark-up if the end 
type-face had been right - it just depends on your point of view ;)

>>-via @var{$arg0@dots{}$arg9}.  A trivial example:
> 
> 
> However, there _is_ something wrong here: the $ part should be outside
> @var, since it's a literal character:
> 
>   via @code{$@var{arg0}@dots{}$@var{arg9}}.

Err, haven't you just put back the @var, and therefore upper case, that 
we just agreed shouldn't be there?

>>+via @code{$arg0@dots{}$arg9}.  A trivial example:
>> 
>> @smallexample
>> define adder
>>   print $arg0 + $arg1 + $arg2
>>+end
>> @end smallexample
> 
> 
> In the example, I would suggest to use something other than arg0 etc.,
> to avoid confusion with arg0..arg9 as placeholders in the paragraph
> where you wanted to remove @var.

But this is an example of how to use $arg0 ?!?!? Also, it isn't my 
example, I only added the 'end'.

> 
> 
>>+@kindex $argc
> 
> 
> I'd replace this with "@cindex arguments for user-defined function".

Replace or augment? I considered adding a kindex for $arg0...$arg9.

I agree that a concept should be added, but how about:

@cindex user-defined functions, argument passing

Just a thought.

> 
> Other than that, the documentation patch is okay with me.  Thanks.

Great, I'll wait for judgement on the code then.

Thanks

Andrew Stubbs