[Ffmpeg-devel] [PATCH]Update Doxygen comments for libavutil/tree.h

[Måns Rullgård]

Jeff Clagg <snacky at ikaruga.co.uk> writes:

> On Mon, Feb 26, 2007 at 11:13:30PM +0000, M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
>> Trent Piepho <xyzzy at speakeasy.org> writes:
>> 
>> > On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, [iso-8859-1] M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
>> >> Trent Piepho <xyzzy at speakeasy.org> writes:
>> >>
>> >> > On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Dujardin Bernard wrote:
>> >> > It has been a long time since I learned this stuff, but I don't think
>> >> > "NULL is returned" is correct.  What tense is "is returned" supposed to
>> >> > be?
>> >>
>> >> That would be the present simple tense.  It is the same form as "the
>> >> car is driven".
>> >
>> > Or is "returned" in "NULL is returned." acting as a participial adjective?
>> > For example, in "The car is damaged," the word damaged is not functioning
>> > as a verb, but as an adjective.
>> >
>> > I guess if you say, "NULL is returned by the function," then clearly "is
>> > retruned" is a verb in the present simple tense and the passive voice.
>> 
>> I'm not sure it's possible to distinguish between those cases here.
>> They are both valid, and they have the same meaning.
>
> If I can weigh in, Trent is right that "is returned" is present simple 

Err... I said that.

> tense. I understand why someone would interpret it as a participle, but 
> that would only be correct if "returned" were a property of "NULL". 
> Instead, "is returned" is what the function does with NULL. "is 
> returned" is definitely a verb here, not an adjective.
>
> If this seems like pointless hairsplitting, it probably is :-)
>
> More importantly, if the phrase is somehow ambiguous to non-native 
> English speakers, I'm sure there is a way to rewrite it so that it's 
> clearer. Mans writes like an above-average native English speaker, and 
> if it's ambiguous to him, it could use re-writing.

It's only the grammatical analysis I'm not certain about.  I have no
doubts about the meaning of the phrase.

-- 
M?ns Rullg?rd
mans at mansr.com