Jasper Spaans recently submitted a patch to the lkml that "changes all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor' in the complete [2.6 development kernel] tree". This quickly led into a lengthy and frequently humorous discussion about the which spelling is better, and if it even matters.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds aknowledged that there are times when such consistency is beneficial, but that overall it was of little importance to him. Regarding the emails that were threatening to quickly grow into a full-fledged flame war, he noted, "I think you guys who care should have a huge free-for-all, an electronic mud-wrestling thing if you will. But not on [the] linux-kernel [mailing list]." In mock newscaster tone, he went on to describe what might happen, "I can see it now:"

".. Alan Cox gets up, and tackles Zwane, who goes down in the mud. Oops. They were on the same side. I guess Alan got caught up in the rush. Jasper tries to take advantage of the situation, but slips in the mud, and goes down in a heap with Alexander..."

Much of the discussion follows.

From: Jasper Spaans [email blocked]
To:  Linus Torvalds
Cc:  Linux Kernel Mailing List
Subject: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2003 20:00:32 +0200

Hello, 

This patch is a followup to changeset 1.1046.1.459,

http://linus.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.5/user=jasper/cset@1.1046.1.459?nav=
!-%7Cindex.html%7Cstats%7C!+%7Cindex.html%7CChangeSet@-3w


It changes all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor' in the complete tree;
I've just comiled all affected files (that is, the config resulting from
make allyesconfig minus already broken stuff) succesfully on i386.

Andries, I did a small check if mount uses the fieldnames frrom the kernel
headers, which doesn't seem to be the case, can you confirm that this?

------------------

[patch]


VrGr,
-- 
Jasper Spaans               http://jsp.vs19.net/contact/

lt;==          ``Got no clue? Too bad for you''          ==>
lt;==                                                    ==>



From: Alan Cox [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: 07 Aug 2003 23:37:23 +0100

On Iau, 2003-08-07 at 19:00, Jasper Spaans wrote:
> It changes all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor' in the complete tree;
> I've just comiled all affected files (that is, the config resulting from
> make allyesconfig minus already broken stuff) succesfully on i386.

The Linux kernel tended to favour european spelling, and favOUr is
indeed correct English.



From: Martin J. Bligh [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2003 17:04:27 -0700

--Alan Cox [email blocked] wrote (on Thursday, August 07, 2003 23:37:23 +0100):

> On Iau, 2003-08-07 at 19:00, Jasper Spaans wrote:
>> It changes all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor' in the complete tree;
>> I've just comiled all affected files (that is, the config resulting from
>> make allyesconfig minus already broken stuff) succesfully on i386.
> 
> The Linux kernel tended to favour european spelling, and favOUr is
> indeed correct English.

Either way, haven't we stopped piddling around with spelling fixes and
breaking everyone's patches yet? I thought we had ...

M.



From: Steven Cole [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: 08 Aug 2003 10:54:48 -0600

On Thu, 2003-08-07 at 18:04, Martin J. Bligh wrote:
> --Alan Cox [email blocked] wrote (on Thursday, August 07, 2003 23:37:23 +0100):
> 
> > On Iau, 2003-08-07 at 19:00, Jasper Spaans wrote:
> >> It changes all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor' in the complete tree;
> >> I've just comiled all affected files (that is, the config resulting from
> >> make allyesconfig minus already broken stuff) succesfully on i386.
> > 
> > The Linux kernel tended to favour european spelling, and favOUr is
> > indeed correct English.
> 
> Either way, haven't we stopped piddling around with spelling fixes and
> breaking everyone's patches yet? I thought we had ...
> 
> M.

Well, I for one have stopped with the spelling patches since the
cost/benefit ratio was too high for many key folks.  When the spelling
patches were being generated, we were quite careful not to "fix" English
spellings.

I won't begin the next round of spelling fixes until 2.7.40, for those
who want to plan ahead that far.  And next time, I'll send the patches
through the maintainers. But we can still argue about spelling fixes if
that makes people happier.

Cheers,
Steven (off-duty spelling cop)



From: Jens Axboe [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 09:13:14 +0200

On Thu, Aug 07 2003, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Iau, 2003-08-07 at 19:00, Jasper Spaans wrote:
> > It changes all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor' in the complete tree;
> > I've just comiled all affected files (that is, the config resulting from
> > make allyesconfig minus already broken stuff) succesfully on i386.
> 
> The Linux kernel tended to favour european spelling, and favOUr is
> indeed correct English.

Eh? Maybe you did (obviously), but I don't see a general trend there. I
tend to prefer favor/color etc. Oh, and disk obviously.

-- 
Jens Axboe

From: Zwane Mwaikambo [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2003 21:42:37 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Jasper Spaans wrote:

> Hello, 
> 
> This patch is a followup to changeset 1.1046.1.459,
> 
> http://linus.bkbits.net:8080/linux-2.5/user=jasper/cset@1.1046.1.459?nav
=!-%7Cindex.html%7Cstats%7C!+%7Cindex.html%7CChangeSet@-3w
> 
> 
> It changes all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor' in the complete tree;
> I've just comiled all affected files (that is, the config resulting from
> make allyesconfig minus already broken stuff) succesfully on i386.

Arrrgh! You can't be serious!



From: Jasper Spaans [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 08:52:30 +0200

On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 09:42:37PM -0400, Zwane Mwaikambo wrote:

> > It changes all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor' in the complete tree;
> > I've just comiled all affected files (that is, the config resulting from
> > make allyesconfig minus already broken stuff) succesfully on i386.
> 
> Arrrgh! You can't be serious!

Yes, I am bloody serious; this patch might look purely cosmetic at first
sight.. yet, there's a technical reason for at least one part of it. Grep
and see the horror:

$ egrep -ni 'flavou?r' fs/nfs/inode.c
[snip]
1357:	rpc_authflavor_t authflavour;
[snip]

VrGr,
-- 
Jasper Spaans                 http://jsp.vs19.net/contact/



From: Timothy Miller [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Fri, 08 Aug 2003 11:18:11 -0400

Jasper Spaans wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 07, 2003 at 09:42:37PM -0400, Zwane Mwaikambo wrote:
> 
> Yes, I am bloody serious; this patch might look purely cosmetic at first
> sight.. yet, there's a technical reason for at least one part of it. Grep
> and see the horror:
> 
> $ egrep -ni 'flavou?r' fs/nfs/inode.c
> [snip]
> 1357:	rpc_authflavor_t authflavour;
> [snip]


Ah, for a moment, I was worried that someone was talking about text in 
comments.

Yes, when it comes to spelling of words in variable and type names, I 
think it would be a good idea to be consistent.

What is Linus's preferred spelling?  Let's use that.



From: Richard B. Johnson [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 11:34:31 -0400 (EDT)

On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, Timothy Miller wrote:

> Ah, for a moment, I was worried that someone was talking about text in
> comments.
>
> Yes, when it comes to spelling of words in variable and type names, I
> think it would be a good idea to be consistent.
>
> What is Linus's preferred spelling?  Let's use that.

It's a little past April Fool's day. What are you guys
smoking? Next, you'll want to change all the 'i's to
'y's and add 'ing'.

Certainly one might want to change:

	int TheVariableThatWillBeUsedAsACounter;

to..
	int i;

However, changing the spelling of a variable name is
absurd no matter how you look at it.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips).
            Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.



From: Trond Myklebust
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: 08 Aug 2003 17:48:30 +0200

Anybody who screws with that spelling is setting himself up for the
red hot poker treatment...

The flavor/flavour thing reflects the fact that the code has been
written and modified by different people with different
backgrounds. Some people have been unfortunate enough to be of the US
persuasion, others have grown up with the British spelling.

Now leave it alone and go do something useful with your lives...

Trond



From: Gene Heskett
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 12:42:14 -0400

On Friday 08 August 2003 11:48, Trond Myklebust wrote:
>Anybody who screws with that spelling is setting himself up for the
>red hot poker treatment...

That and toothpicks under the fingernails comes to mind.

>The flavor/flavour thing reflects the fact that the code has been
>written and modified by different people with different
>backgrounds. Some people have been unfortunate enough to be of the
> US persuasion, others have grown up with the British spelling.
>
>Now leave it alone and go do something useful with your lives...
>
>Trond

What about the scenario where both spellings are used in  a header 
someplace that winds up being a systemwide reference?  I don't know 
that it has been, but such a 'correction' has the potential to take 
us back to square one and 1993.  I have had recurring daytime 
nightmares of such possibilities since this subject came up the first 
time a week or so ago.

Methinks the proponent here should find another, more productive 
outlet for his frustrations.  This particular dog won't hunt.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
99.27% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com attornies please note, additions to this message
by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.



From: Jasper Spaans [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 19:03:36 +0200

> What about the scenario where both spellings are used in  a header 
> someplace that winds up being a systemwide reference?  I don't know 
> that it has been, but such a 'correction' has the potential to take 
> us back to square one and 1993.  I have had recurring daytime 
> nightmares of such possibilities since this subject came up the first 
> time a week or so ago.

Wow. My FUD-o-meter just went berserk.

VrGr,
-- 
Jasper Spaans                 http://jsp.vs19.net/contact/

lt;==  The only intuitive interface ever created was a   ==>
lt;==                      nipple.                       ==>



From: Alan Cox [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: 08 Aug 2003 18:34:06 +0100

On Gwe, 2003-08-08 at 18:03, Jasper Spaans wrote:
> Wow. My FUD-o-meter just went berserk.

Well we expose both Color and Colour in various application level
interfaces. As far as I am concerned Englishlt;->English changes are just
noise. Fixing real typos can be a big help especially to non first
language speakers who are wondering just wtf that word is..

From: Linus Torvalds [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 10:18:41 -0700 (PDT)

On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, Timothy Miller wrote:
>
> > 1357:	rpc_authflavor_t authflavour;

This one I think is valid. Considering how many people seem to care, I 
think we should keep it as the only valid case for now.

> Yes, when it comes to spelling of words in variable and type names, I 
> think it would be a good idea to be consistent.
> 
> What is Linus's preferred spelling?  Let's use that.

I don't much care. I was taught English spelling in school, and I've 
gotten used to US spelling here.

I think you guys who care should have a huge free-for-all, an electronic
mud-wrestling thing if you will. But not on linux-kernel. 

I can see it now:

   ".. Alan Cox gets up, and tackles Zwane, who goes down in the mud.  
    Oops.  They were on the same side. I guess Alan got caught up in the
    rush.  Jasper tries to take advantage of the situation, but slips in
    the mud, and goes down in a heap with Alexander..."

Tell me when it's over.

		Linus



From: Jasper Spaans [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 19:33:21 +0200

On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 10:18:41AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> > > 1357:	rpc_authflavor_t authflavour;
> This one I think is valid. Considering how many people seem to care, I 
> think we should keep it as the only valid case for now.

Right. I'll whip up a patch that is somewhat more subtle... minimizing the
damage done to other files.

> I think you guys who care should have a huge free-for-all, an electronic
> mud-wrestling thing if you will. But not on linux-kernel. 
> ...

:D

VrGr,
-- 
Jasper Spaans               http://jsp.vs19.net/contact/



From: Trond Myklebust
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: 09 Aug 2003 02:24:15 +0200

>>>>> " " == Linus Torvalds [email blocked] writes:

     > On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, Timothy Miller wrote:
    >>
    >> > 1357: rpc_authflavor_t authflavour;

     > This one I think is valid. Considering how many people seem to
     > care, I think we should keep it as the only valid case for now.

Since we appear to be in the silly season...

[patch]



From: Linus Torvalds [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 17:41:18 -0700 (PDT)


On 9 Aug 2003, Trond Myklebust wrote:
> 
> Since we appear to be in the silly season...

No, your patch isn't silly, it's EVIL. It fundamentally breaks the notion 
of "grep for usage" by introducing two names to the same thing, without 
having even a good reason (ie no "nice abstraction" thing or anything).

So that's just bad.

In contrast, switching "authflavour" to "authflavor" (to match the type) 
ahs the advantage of _improving_ greppability.

		Linus



From: Trond Myklebust
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2003 03:04:22 +0200

>>>>> " " == Linus Torvalds [email blocked] writes:

     > On 9 Aug 2003, Trond Myklebust wrote:
    >>
    >> Since we appear to be in the silly season...

     > No, your patch isn't silly, it's EVIL. It fundamentally breaks
     > the notion of "grep for usage" by introducing two names to the
     > same thing, without having even a good reason (ie no "nice
     > abstraction" thing or anything).

Right! I fully agree that having 2 names for the same type is bad,
although "find -type f | grep flavou?r" would be a quite adequate way
of matching both spellings.

The point is, though, that I could have written

rpc_authflavor_t f;

and nobody would have cared or complained about grepability.

Anybody who claims that they have problems reading the code due to the
difference between US and British spelling of the same variable is in
reality engaged in a completely different type of crusade. One that
doesn't deserve attention...

Cheers,
  Trond



From: Ian Hastie [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2003 02:17:54 +0100

On Saturday 09 Aug 2003 01:41, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On 9 Aug 2003, Trond Myklebust wrote:
> > Since we appear to be in the silly season...
>
> No, your patch isn't silly, it's EVIL. It fundamentally breaks the notion
> of "grep for usage" by introducing two names to the same thing, without
> having even a good reason (ie no "nice abstraction" thing or anything).
>
> So that's just bad.
>
> In contrast, switching "authflavour" to "authflavor" (to match the type)
> ahs the advantage of _improving_ greppability.

... as long as you remember to misspell the word.

-- 
Ian.

From: Jasper Spaans [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Change all occurrences of 'flavour' to 'flavor'
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2003 02:45:59 +0200

On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 05:41:18PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > Since we appear to be in the silly season...
> So that's just bad.
>
> In contrast, switching "authflavour" to "authflavor" (to match the type)
> ahs the advantage of _improving_ greppability.

As I stated before, I'll whip up a patch. However, it's 2:45 localtime here
right now, and I need to catch some sleep.

VrGr,
-- 
Jasper Spaans                 http://jsp.vs19.net/contact/



From: Jasper Spaans [email blocked]
Subject: [PATCH] Fix up fs/nfs/inode.c wrt flavo[u]r
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2003 21:56:07 +0200

On Sat, Aug 09, 2003 at 02:45:59AM +0200, Jasper Spaans wrote:
> As I stated before, I'll whip up a patch. However, it's 2:45 localtime here
> right now, and I need to catch some sleep.

Here goes; this is the least intrusive version I could make which still
makes sense.


 fs/nfs/inode.c             |   16 ++++++++--------
 include/linux/nfs4_mount.h |    4 ++--
 include/linux/nfs_mount.h  |    2 +-
 3 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

For those who want to look at this without using bitkeeper, a plaintext
patch is available at 

http://jsp.vs19.net/tmp/flavour.txt

[uu wrapped patch removed]

--  
Jasper Spaans                 http://jsp.vs19.net/contact/

lt;==      Het bedrijf van de appelcomputer is niet      ==>
lt;==    verantwoordelijk voor de omzettingsprecisie.    ==>



From: Jasper Spaans [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Fix up fs/nfs/inode.c wrt flavo[u]r, try 2
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2003 23:41:16 +0200

Whoops, something went wrong here while exporting. Inline not wrapped etc bk
patch follows, and if someone has seen my brown paper bag, please tell me. I
think I lost it at friday's mud fight.


 fs/nfs/inode.c             |   18 +++++++++---------
 include/linux/nfs4_mount.h |    4 ++--
 include/linux/nfs_mount.h  |    2 +-
 3 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

[patch]

VrGr,
-- 
Jasper Spaans               http://jsp.vs19.net/contact/

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