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

[Jeff Clagg]

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 
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.