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

[Måns Rullgård]

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.

> Still, using the present simple after an if clause seems wrong to me.

Why?

BTW, you probably know formal English grammar better than I do, since
I've hardly ever studied it properly.  I usually get it right, but I
don't necessarily know why it's right.

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