[Yum] Manual format mistake

Göran Uddeborg goeran at uddeborg.se
Fri Apr 22 10:50:44 UTC 2005


(I'm not a list member, so if you want me to se any answer, you need
to add me explicitly on an address line.)

The manual page for yum (2.3.1) has this sequence:

    repositories. By default it will list only the most recent packages. If the
    'updates' argument is given then it will list updates available for that
    system.

However, an apostrophe on the first position on a line starts a
command sequence in nroff, just like a full stop.  Since "updates"
isn't a command, the result is that the line is ignored, and the
formatted pages comes out as:

              ages in the enabled repositories. By default it will  list  only
              the most recent packages. If the system.

(As I understand it, at the time the language was designed, ASCII
prevailed, and todays Unicode distinction between apostrophes,
quotation marks, etc. wasn't yet begun.  So ASCII 0x60 was used as
opening quotation mark as well as grave accent etc., and ASCII 0x27
was used as closing quotation mark among other things.  Thus, the way
to quote was like `this', which is ok to have at the start of a line
in nroff code.)



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